“Márya Ivánovna, Márya Ivánovna! Where are you going? Your mother will be worried. You will have time,” was heard the voice of fat Katerína behind her.
But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange glance.
“Well, papa, have you been to communion?” she asked, as though in dread.
“Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I could not receive the communion.”
The girl was apparently offended by her father’s jest at such a solemn moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she kissed.
“Who is here?”
“Young Chernýshev. He is in the drawing-room.”
“Is mamma up? How is she?”
“Mamma feels better today. She is sitting downstairs.”
In the passage room Iván Petróvich was met by nurse Evprakséya, clerk Andréy Ivánovich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Iván Petróvich. In the drawing-room sat Luíza Kárlovna Trugóni, for ten years a friend of the house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years, Chernýshev, with his French tutor.