sweet nor friendly, nor even a dream, but, like a nightmare, lay, an immovable dead load, on her heart; seeming to reproach her and be indignant with her, and not to care to know about her....’You are ours in spite of everything,’ she seemed to hear. Even her poor pets, her ill-used birds and animals looked at her--so at least she fancied--with suspicion and hostility. She felt conscience-stricken and ashamed of her feelings. ‘This is my home after all,’ she thought, ‘my family, my country.’... ‘No, it’s no longer your country, nor your family,’ another voice affirmed within her. Terror was overmastering her, and she was vexed with her own feebleness. The trial was only beginning and she was losing patience already... Was this what she had promised? She did not soon gain control of herself. But a week passed and then another.... Elena became a little calmer, and grew used to her new position. She wrote two little notes to Insarov, and carried them herself to the post: she could not for anything--through shame and through pride--have brought herself to confide in a maid. She was already beginning to expect him in person.... But instead of Insarov, one fine morning Nikolai Artemyevitch made his appearance. XXII No one in the house of the retired lieutenant of guards, Stahov, had ever seen him so sour, and at the same time so self-confident and important as on that day. He walked into the drawing-room in his overcoat and hat, with long deliberate stride, stamping with his heels; he approached the looking-glass and took a long look at himself, shaking his head and biting his lips with imperturbable severity. Anna Vassilyevna met him with obvious agitation and secret delight (she never met him otherwise); he did not even take off his hat, nor greet her, and in silence gave Elena his doe-skin glove to kiss. Anna Vassilyevna began questioning him about the progress of his cure; he made her no reply. Uvar Ivanovitch made his appearance; he glanced at him and said, ‘bah!’ He usually behaved coldly and haughtily to Uvar Ivanovitch, though he acknowledged in him ‘traces of the true Stahov blood.’ Almost all Russian families of the nobility are convinced, as is well known, of the existence of exceptional hereditary characteristics, peculiar to them alone; we have more than once heard discussions ‘among ourselves’ of the Podsalaskinsky ‘noses,’ and the ‘Perepreyevsky’ necks. Zoya came in and sat down facing Nikolai Artemyevitch. He grunted, sank into an armchair, asked for coffee, and only then took off his hat. Coffee was brought him; he drank a cup, and looking at everybody in turn, he growled between his teeth, ‘_Sortes, s’il vous plaît_,’ and turning to his wife he added, ‘_et vous, madame, restez, je vous prie_.’ They all left the room, except Anna Vassilyevna. Her head was trembling with agitation. The solemnity of Nikolai Artemyevitch’s preparations impressed her. She was expecting something extraordinary.