“She is ill, she is raving,” she thought: “we must send for a doctor; but for which one? Gedeonovsky was praising one the other day; he always tells lies--but perhaps this time he spoke the truth.” But when she was convinced that Lisa was not ill, and was not raving, when she constantly made the same answer to all her expostulations, Marfa Timofyevna was alarmed and distressed in earnest. “But you don’t know, my darling,” she began to reason with her, “what a life it is in those convents! Why, they would feed you, my own, on green hemp oil, and they would put you in the coarsest linen, and make you go about in the cold; you will never be able to bear all that, Lisa, darling. All this is Agafya’s doing; she led you astray. But then you know she began by living and lived for her own pleasure; you must live, too. At least, let me die in peace, and then do as you like. And who has ever heard of such a thing, for the sake of such a--for the sake of a goat’s beard, God forgive us!--for the sake of a man--to go into a convent! Why, if you are so sick at heart, go on a pilgrimage, offer prayers to some saint, have a Te Deum sung, but don’t put the black hood on your head, my dear creature, my good girl.” And Marfa Timofyevna wept bitterly. Lisa comforted her, wiped away her tears and wept herself, but remained unshaken. In her despair Marfa Timofyevna had recourse to threats: to tell her mother all about it... but that too was of no avail. Only at the old lady’s most earnest entreaties Lisa agreed to put off carrying out her plan for six months. Marfa Timofyevna was obliged to promise in return that if, within six months, she did not change her mind, she would herself help her and would do all she could to gain Marya Dmitrievna’s consent. In spite of her promise to bury herself in seclusion, at the first approach of cold weather, Varvara Pavlovna, having provided herself with funds, removed to Petersburg, where she took a modest but charming set of apartments, found for her by Panshin; who had left the O-----district a little before. During the latter part of his residence in O----- he had completely lost Marya Dmitrievna’s good graces; he had suddenly given up visiting her and scarcely stirred from Lavriky. Varvara Pavolvna had enslaved him, literally enslaved him, no other word can describe her boundless, irresistible, unquestioned sway over him. Lavretsky spent the winter in Moscow; and in the spring of the following year the news reached him that Lisa had taken the veil in the B-----convent, in one of the remote parts of Russia. Epilogue