'Ah! Konstantin Diomiditch! good-morning!' she replied. 'You have
come from Darya Mihailovna?'

'Precisely so, precisely so,' rejoined the young man with a radiant
face, 'from Darya Mihailovna. Darya Mihailovna sent me to you; I
preferred to walk. . . . It's such a glorious morning, and the distance
is only three miles. When I arrived, you were not at home. Your
brother told me you had gone to Semenovka; and he was just going out
to the fields; so you see I walked with him to meet you. Yes, yes.
How very delightful!'

The young man spoke Russian accurately and grammatically but with a
foreign accent, though it was difficult to determine exactly what
accent it was. In his features there was something Asiatic. His long
hook nose, his large expressionless prominent eyes, his thick red
lips, and retreating forehead, and his jet black hair,--everything
about him suggested an Oriental extraction; but the young man gave his
surname as Pandalevsky and spoke of Odessa as his birthplace, though
he was brought up somewhere in White Russia at the expense of a rich
and benevolent widow.

Another widow had obtained a government post for him. Middle-aged
ladies were generally ready to befriend Konstantin Diomiditch; he knew
well how to court them and was successful in coming across them. He
was at this very time living with a rich lady, a landowner, Darya
Mihailovna Lasunsky, in a position between that of a guest and of a
dependant. He was very polite and obliging, full of sensibility and
secretly given to sensuality, he had a pleasant voice, played well on
the piano, and had the habit of gazing intently into the eyes of any
one he was speaking to. He dressed very neatly, and wore his clothes a