Meanwhile the coachman, with the groom and the maid, had brought the baskets out of the coach, and made dinner ready on the grass under the old lime-trees. They sat down round the outspread tablecloth, and fell upon the pies and other dainties. They all had excellent appetites, while Anna Vassilyevna, with unflagging hospitality, kept urging the guests to eat more, assuring them that nothing was more wholesome than eating in the open air. She even encouraged Uvar Ivanovitch with such assurances. ‘Don’t trouble about me!’ he grunted with his mouth full. ‘Such a lovely day is a God-send, indeed!’ she repeated constantly. One would not have known her; she seemed fully twenty years younger. Bersenyev said as much to her. ‘Yes, yes.’ she said; ‘I could hold my own with any one in my day.’ Shubin attached himself to Zoya, and kept pouring her out wine; she refused it, he pressed her, and finished by drinking the glass himself, and again pressing her to take another; he also declared that he longed to lay his head on her knee; she would on no account permit him ‘such a liberty.’ Elena seemed the most serious of the party, but in her heart there was a wonderful sense of peace, such as she had not known for long. She felt filled with boundless goodwill and kindness, and wanted to keep not only Insarov, but Bersenyev too, always at her side.... Andrei Petrovitch dimly understood what this meant, and secretly he sighed. The hours flew by; the evening was coming on. Anna Vassilyevna suddenly took alarm. ‘Ah, my dear friends, how late it is!’ she cried. ‘All good things must have an end; it’s time to go home.’ She began bustling about, and they all hastened to get up and walk towards the castle, where the carriages were. As they walked past the lakes, they stopped to admire Tsaritsino for the last time. The landscape on all sides was glowing with the vivid hues of early evening; the sky was red, the leaves were flashing with changing colours as they stirred in the rising wind; the distant waters shone in liquid gold; the reddish turrets and arbours scattered about the garden stood out sharply against the dark green of the trees. ‘Farewell, Tsaritsino, we shall not forget to-day’s excursion!’ observed Anna Vassilyevna.... But at that instant, and as though in confirmation of her words, a strange incident occurred, which certainly was not likely to be forgotten.