Lavretsky himself spoke little, but the peculiar expression his face wore struck Liza as soon as he entered the room. She immediately felt that he had something to communicate to her; but, without knowing herself why, she was afraid of asking him any questions. At last, as she was passing into the next room to make the tea, she almost unconsciously looked towards him. He immediately followed her. "What is the matter with you?" she asked, putting the teapot on the _samovar_.[A] [Footnote A: Urn.] "You have remarked something, then?" he said. "You are different to-day from what I have seen you before." Lavretsky bent over the table. "I wanted," he began, "to tell you a piece of news, but just now it is impossible. But read the part of this _feuilleton_ which is marked in pencil," he added, giving her the copy of the newspaper he had brought with him. "Please keep the secret; I will come back to-morrow morning." Liza was thoroughly amazed. At that moment Panshine appeared in the doorway. She put the newspaper in her pocket. "Have you read Obermann,[A] Lizaveta Mikhailovna?" asked Panshine with a thoughtful air. [Footnote A: The sentimental romance of that name, written by E. Pivert de Sénancour.] Liza replied vaguely as she passed out of the room, and then went up-stairs. Lavretsky returned into the drawing room and approached the card table. Marfa Timofeevna flushed, and with her cap-strings untied, began to complain to him of her partner Gedeonovsky, who, according to her, had not yet learnt his steps. "Card-playing," she said, "is evidently a very different thing from gossiping." Meanwhile Gedeonovsky never left off blinking and mopping himself with his handkerchief. Presently Liza returned to the drawing-room and sat down in a corner. Lavretsky looked at her and she at him, and each experienced a painful sensation. He could read perplexity on her face, and a kind of secret reproach. Much as he wished it, he could not get a talk with her, and to remain in the same room with her as a mere visitor among other visitors was irksome to him, so he determined to go away. When taking leave of her, he contrived to repeat that he would come next day, and he added that he counted on her friendship. "Come," she replied, with the same perplexed look still on her face. After Lavretsky's departure, Panshine grew animated. He began to give advice to Gedeonovsky, and to make mock love to Madame Belenitsine, and at last he sang his romance. But when gazing at Liza, or talking to her, he maintained the same air as before, one of deep meaning, with a touch of sadness in it.