the management any longer, and did not want to stop in the place.  Lavretsky, having been suitably prepared beforehand, at once agreed to her departure.  This Glafira Petrovna had not anticipated.  “Very well,” she said, and her face darkened, “I see that I am not wanted here!  I know who is driving me out of the home of my fathers.  Only you mark my words, nephew; you will never make a home anywhere, you will come to be a wanderer for ever.  That is my last word to you.”  The same day she went away to her own little property, and in a week General Korobyin was there, and with a pleasant melancholy in his looks and movements he took the superintendence of the whole property into his hands.

In the month of September, Varvara Pavlovna carried her husband off to Petersburg.  She passed two winters in Petersburg (for the summer she went to stay at Tsarskoe Selo), in a splendid, light, artistically-furnished flat; they made many acquaintances among the middle and even higher ranks of society; went out and entertained a great deal, and gave the most charming dances and musical evenings.  Varvara Pavlovna attracted guests as a fire attracts moths.  Fedor Ivanitch did not altogether like such a frivolous life.  His wife advised him to take some office under government; but from old association with his father, and also through his own ideas, he was unwilling to enter government service, still he remained in Petersburg for Varvara Pavlovna’s pleasure.  He soon discovered, however, that no one hindered him from being alone; that it was not for nothing that he had the quietest and most comfortable study in all Petersburg; that his tender wife was even ready to aid him to! be alone; and from that time forth all went well.  He again applied himself to his own, as he considered, unfinished education; he began again to read, and even began to learn English.  It was a strange sight to see his powerful, broad-shouldered figure for ever bent over his writing table, his full-bearded ruddy face half buried in the pages of a dictionary or note-book.  Every morning he set to work, then had a capital dinner (Varvara Pavlovna was unrivaled as a housekeeper), and in the evenings he entered an enchanted world of light and perfume, peopled by gay young faces, and the centre of this world was also the careful housekeeper, his wife.  She rejoiced his heart by the birth of a son, but the poor child did not live long; it died in the spring, and in the summer, by the advice of the doctors, Lavretsky took his wife abroad to a watering-place.  Distraction was essential for her after such a trouble, and her health, too, required a warm climate.  The summer and autumn they spent in Germany and Switzerland, and for the winter, as one would naturally expect, they went to Paris.  In Paris, Varvara Pavlovna bloomed like a rose, and was able to make herself a little nest as quickly and cleverly as in Petersburg.  She found very pretty apartments in one of the quiet but fashionable