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RUDIN her daughter. When she had heard from Pandalevsky of her meeting with Rudin, she was not so much displeased as amazed that her sensible Natalya could resolve upon such a step. But when she had sent for her, and fell to upbraiding her—not at all as one would have expected from a lady of European renown, but with loud and vulgar abuse—Natalya’s firm replies, and the resolution of her looks and movements, had confused and even intimidated her.

Rudin’s sudden, and wholly unexplained, departure had taken a great load off her heart, but she had expected tears, and hysterics. Natalya’s outward composure threw her out of her reckoning again.

‘Well, child,’ began Darya Mihailovna, ‘how are you to-day?’ Natalya looked at her mother. ‘He is gone, you see your hero. Do you know why he decided on going so quickly?’

‘Mamma!’ said Natalya in a low voice, ‘I give you my word, if you will not mention him, you shall never hear his name from me.’

‘Then you acknowledge how wrongly you behaved to me?’ 204