She glanced vaguely down the broad walk—­the hand she put out to me eluded my grasp by an unexpected upward movement, and rested upon my shoulder.  Her red lips were slightly parted, not in a smile, however, but expressing a sort of startled pleasure.  She gazed towards the gates and said quickly, with a gasp—­

“There!  I knew it.  Here he comes!”

I understood that she must mean Mr. Razumov.  A young man was walking up the alley, without haste.  His clothes were some dull shade of brown, and he carried a stick.  When my eyes first fell on him, his head was hanging on his breast as if in deep thought.  While I was looking at him he raised it sharply, and at once stopped.  I am certain he did, but that pause was nothing more perceptible than a faltering check in his gait, instantaneously overcome.  Then he continued his approach, looking at us steadily.  Miss Haldin signed to me to remain, and advanced a step or two to meet him.

I turned my head away from that meeting, and did not look at them again till I heard Miss Haldin’s voice uttering his name in the way of introduction.  Mr. Razumov was informed, in a warm, low tone, that, besides being a wonderful teacher, I was a great support “in our sorrow and distress.”

Of course I was described also as an Englishman.  Miss Haldin spoke rapidly, faster than I have ever heard her speak, and that by contrast made the quietness of her eyes more expressive.

“I have given him my confidence,” she added, looking all the time at Mr. Razumov.  That young man did, indeed, rest his gaze on Miss Haldin, but certainly did not look into her eyes which were so ready for him.  Afterwards he glanced backwards and forwards at us both, while the faint commencement of a forced smile, followed by the suspicion of a frown, vanished one after another; I detected them, though neither could have been noticed by a person less intensely bent upon divining him than myself.  I don’t know what Nathalie Haldin had observed, but my attention seized the very shades of these movements.  The attempted smile was given up, the incipient frown was checked, and smoothed so that there should be no sign; but I imagined him exclaiming inwardly—­

“Her confidence!  To this elderly person—­this foreigner!”

I imagined this because he looked foreign enough to me.  I was upon the whole favourably impressed.  He had an air of intelligence and even some distinction quite above the average of the students and other inhabitants of the Petite Russie.  His features were more decided than in the generality of Russian faces; he had a line of the jaw, a clean-shaven, sallow cheek; his nose was a ridge, and not a mere protuberance.  He wore the hat well down over his eyes, his dark hair curled low on the nape of his neck; in the ill-fitting brown clothes there were sturdy limbs; a slight stoop brought out a satisfactory breadth of shoulders.  Upon the whole I was not disappointed.  Studious—­robust—­shy.