"And Michael, the other day, asked me: 'Is it true that the master is living with my wife?' I said I did not know. Anyway, I said, better with the master than with a peasant."
"Well, and what did he say?"
"He said,—'Wait a bit. I'll get to know, and I'll give it her all the same.'"
"Yes, if the husband returned to live here, I would give her up," thought Eugene.
But the husband lived in town and for the present their intercourse continued.
"When necessary, I will break it off, and there will be nothing left of it," thought he.
And this seemed to him certain, especially as during the whole summer many different things occupied him very fully: the erection of the new farm-house, and the harvest, and building, and above all meeting the debts and selling the waste land. All these were affairs that completely absorbed him and on which he spent his thoughts when he lay down and when he rose. All that was, real life. His intercourse—he did not even call it connection—with Stepanida was something quite unnoticed. It is true that when the wish to see her arose, it came with such strength that he could think of nothing else. But this did not last long. A meeting was arranged, and he again forgot her for a week or even for a month.
In autumn Eugene often rode to town, and there became friendly with the Annenskis. They had a daughter who had just finished the Institute.[1] And then, to Mary Pavlovna's great grief, it happened that Eugene, as she expressed it, "cheapened himself,"—by falling in love with Liza Annenskaya and proposing to her.
From that time the relations with Stepanida ceased.
[1]The Institute was a boarding-school for the daughters of the nobility and gentry, in which great attention was paid to the manners and accomplishments of the pupils.