stepped out, escorted by a dark, black-eyed man, whom Nezhdanovhad never seen till that instant.
Both stopped, as if they had been shot, at the sight of Nezhdanov, while he was so astounded that he did not even get up from the stump on which he was sitting.. . . Marianna blushed up to the roots of her hair, but at once smiled contemptuously. For whom was the smile meant─for herself for having blushed, or for Nezhdanov? . . . Her companion knitted his bushy brows, and there was a gleam in the yellowish whites of his uneasy eyes. Then he looked at Marianna, and both of them, turning their backs on Nezhdanov, walked away in silence, at the same slow pace, while he followed them with a stare of amazement.
Half an hour later he went home and to his room, and when, summoned by the booming of the gong, he went into the drawing-room, he saw in it the same swarthy stranger who had come upon him in the copse. Sipyagin led Nezhdanov up to him and introduced him as his beau-frère, the brother of Valentina Mihalovna─Sergei Mihalovitch Markelov.
'I hope you will be good friends, gentlemen!' cried Sipyagin, with the majestically affable though absent-minded smile characteristic of him.
Markelov performed a silent bow; Nezh-
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