of the house stood motionless at the door, waiting. From the
conversation Korolyov learned that the patient was Madame Lyalikov's
only daughter and heiress, a girl of twenty, called Liza; she had
been ill for a long time, and had consulted various doctors, and
the previous night she had suffered till morning from such violent
palpitations of the heart, that no one in the house had slept, and
they had been afraid she might die.

"She has been, one may say, ailing from a child," said Christina
Dmitryevna in a sing-song voice, continually wiping her lips with
her hand. "The doctors say it is nerves; when she was a little girl
she was scrofulous, and the doctors drove it inwards, so I think
it may be due to that."

They went to see the invalid. Fully grown up, big and tall, but
ugly like her mother, with the same little eyes and disproportionate
breadth of the lower part of the face, lying with her hair in
disorder, muffled up to the chin, she made upon Korolyov at the
first minute the impression of a poor, destitute creature, sheltered
and cared for here out of charity, and he could hardly believe that
this was the heiress of the five huge buildings.

"I am the doctor come to see you," said Korolyov. "Good evening."

He mentioned his name and pressed her hand, a large, cold, ugly
hand; she sat up, and, evidently accustomed to doctors, let herself
be sounded, without showing the least concern that her shoulders
and chest were uncovered.

"I have palpitations of the heart," she said, "It was so awful all