on the ground, but did not withdraw her hand. Up stairs, in Marfa
Timofeevna's room, the light of the lamp, which hung in the corner
before the age-embrowned sacred pictures, fell on Lavretsky, as he sat
in an arm-chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his face hidden in
his hands. In front of him stood the old lady, who from time to time
silently passed her hand over his hair. He spent more than an hour
with her after taking leave of the mistress of the house, he scarcely
saying a word to his kind old friend, and she not asking him any
questions. And why should he have spoken? what could she have asked?
She understood all so well, she so fully sympathized with all the
feelings which filled his heart.




VIII.


Fedor Ivanovich Lavretsky (we must ask our reader's permission to
break off the thread of the story for a time) sprang from a noble
family of long descent. The founder of the race migrated from Prussia
during the reign of Basil the Blind,[A] and was favored with a grant
of two hundred _chetverts_[B] of land in the district of Biejetsk.
Many of his descendants filled various official positions, and were
appointed to governorships in distant places, under princes and
influential personages, but none of them obtained any great amount of
property, or arrived at a higher dignity, than that of inspector of
the Czar's table.

[Footnote A: In the fifteenth century.]