He bowed to both the ladies, and hurriedly went away.

“Are you not going to take her with you!” Marya Dmitrievna cried after him . . . .  “Leave him alone,” Varvara Pavlovna whispered to her.  And at once she embraced her, and began thanking her, kissing her hands and calling her saviour.

Marya Dmitrievna received her caresses indulgently; but at heart she was discontented with Lavretsky, with Varvara Pavlovna, and with the whole scene she had prepared.  Very little sentimentality had come of it; Varvara Pavlovna, in her opinion, ought to have flung herself at her husband’s feet.

“How was it you didn’t understand me?” she commented:  “I kept saying ‘down.’”

“It is better as it was, dear auntie; do not be uneasy—­it was all for the best,” Varvara Pavlovna assured her.

“Well, any way, he’s as cold as ice,” observed Marya Dmitrievna.  “You didn’t weep, it is true, but I was in floods of tears before his eyes.  He wants to shut you up at Lavriky.  Why, won’t you even be able to come and see me?  All men are unfeeling,” she concluded, with a significant shake of the head.

“But then women can appreciate goodness and noble-heartedness,” said Varvara Pavlovna, and gently dropping on her knees before Marya Dmitrievna, she flung her arms about her round person, and pressed her face against it.  That face wore a sly smile, but Marya Dmitrievna’s tears began to flow again.

When Lavretsky returned home, he locked himself in his valet’s room, and flung himself on a sofa; he lay like that till morning.

Chapter XLIV

The following day was Sunday.  The sound of bells ringing for early mass did not wake Lavretsky—­he had not closed his eyes all night—­but it reminded him of another Sunday, when at Lisa’s desire he had gone to church.  He got up hastily; some secret voice told him that he would see her there to-day.  He went noiselessly out of the house, leaving a message for Varvara Pavlovna that he would be back to dinner, and with long strides he made his way in the direction in which the monotonously mournful bells were calling him.  He arrived early; there was scarcely any one in the church; a deacon was reading the service in the chair; the measured drone of his voice—­sometimes broken by a cough—­fell and rose at even intervals.  Lavretsky placed himself not far from the entrance.  Worshippers came in one by one, stopped, crossed themselves, and bowed in all directions; their steps rang out in the empty, silent church, echoing back distinctly under the arched roof.  An infirm poor little old woman in a worn-out cloak with a hood was on her knees near Lavretsky, praying assiduously; her toothless, yellow, wrinkled face expressed intense emotion; her red eyes were gazing fixedly upwards at the holy figures on the iconostasis; her bony hand was constantly coming out from under her cloak, and slowly and earnestly