After dinner, Lemm took a small roll of music-paper out of the tail-pocket of his coat, into which he had been constantly putting his hand, and silently, with compressed lips, placed it upon the piano.  It contained a romance, which he had written the day before to some old-fashioned German words, in which mention was made of the stars.  Liza immediately sat down to the piano, and interpreted the romance.  Unfortunately the music turned out to be confused and unpleasantly constrained.  It was evident that the composer had attempted to express some deep and passionate idea, but no result had been attained.  The attempt remained an attempt, and nothing more.  Both Lavretsky and Liza felt this, and Lemm was conscious of it too.  Without saying a word, he put his romance back into his pocket; and, in reply to Liza’s proposal to play it over again, he merely shook his head, and said, in a tone of meaning, “For the present—­basta!” then bent his head, stooped his shoulders, and left the room.

Towards evening they all went out together to fish.  In the little lake at the end of the garden there were numbers of carp and groundling.  Madame Kalitine had an arm-chair set in the shade for her, near the edge of the water, and a carpet was spread out under her feet.  Anton, as an old fisherman of great experience, offered her his services.  Zealously did he fasten on the worms, slap them with his hand, and spit upon them, and then fling the line into the water himself, gracefully bending forwards the whole of his body.  Maria Dmitrievna had already that day spoken about him to Fedor Ivanovich, using the following phrase of Institute-French:—­“Il n’y a plus maintenant de ces gens comme ca autre fois.”

Lemm and the two little girls went on to the dam at the end of the lake.  Lavretsky placed himself near Liza.  The fish kept continually nibbling.  Every minute a captured carp glistened in the air with its sometimes golden, sometimes silver, sides.  The little girls kept up a ceaseless flow of joyful exclamations.  Madame Kalitine herself two or three times uttered a plaintive cry.  Lavretsky and Liza caught fewer fish than the others; probably because they paid less attention to their fishing, and let their floats drift up against the edge of the lake.  The tall, reddish reeds murmured quietly around them; in front quietly shone the unruffled water, and the conversation they carried on was quiet too.

Liza stood on the little platform [placed there for the use of the washerwomen;] Lavretsky sat on the bent stem of a willow.  Liza wore a white dress, fastened round the waist by a broad, white ribbon.  From one hand hung her straw hat; with the other she, not without some effort, supported her drooping fishing-rod.  Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile—­at the hair turned back behind her ears—­at her soft cheeks, the hue of which was like that of a young child’s—­and thought:  “How charming you look, standing there by my lake!” Liza did not look at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the water, something which might be a smile lurking about their corners.  Over both Lavretsky and Liza fell the shadow of a neighboring lime-tree.