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RUDIN our life in those days some other time, I can’t now. Then he went abroad. ’

Lezhnyov continued to walk up and down the room; Alexandra Pavlovna followed him with her eyes.

‘While he was abroad,’ he continued, ‘Rudin wrote very rarely to his mother, and paid her altogether only one visit for ten days. The old lady died without him, cared for by strangers; but up to her death she never took her eyes off his portrait. I went to see her when I was staying in T. She was a kind and hospitable woman; she always used to feast me on cherry jam. She loved her Mitya devotedly. People of the Childe Herold type tell us that we always love those who are least capable of feeling love themselves; but it’s my idea that all mothers love their children especially when they are absent. Afterwards I met Rudin abroad. Then he was connected with a lady, one of our countrywomen, a bluestocking, no longer young, and plain, as a bluestocking is bound to be. He lived a good while with her, and at last threw her over—or no, I beg pardon,—she threw him over. It 96