P⸺ Z⸺, who had returned from Sevastopol, and with whom she was in love. (She had some passion all the time.) He was to dine with her on that day. The vicar got up and bowed himself out. Márya Ivánovna did not keep him—she was a freethinker in this respect: she was pious, but had no use for monks and laughed at the ladies that ran after them, and boldly asserted that in her opinion monks were just such men as we sinful people, and that it was better to find salvation in the world than in a monastery.
“Give the order not to receive anybody, my dear,” she said, “I will write to Pierre. I cannot understand why he is not coming. No doubt, Natálya Nikoláevna is ill.”
Márya Ivánovna was of the opinion that Natálya Nikoláevna did not like her and was her enemy. She could not forgive her because it was not she, his sister, who had given up her property and had followed him to Siberia, but Natálya Nikoláevna, and because her brother had definitely declined her offer when she got ready to go with him. After thirty-five years she was beginning to believe that Natálya Nikoláevna was the best woman in the world and his guardian angel; but she was envious, and it seemed all the time to her that she was not a good woman.
She got up, took a few steps in the parlour, and was on the point of entering the cabinet when the door opened, and Madame Byéshev’s wrinkled, grayish face, expressing joyous terror, was thrust through the door.
“Márya Ivánovna, prepare yourself,” she said.
“A letter?”
“No, something better—”
But before she had a chance to finish, a man’s loud voice was heard in the antechamber: