An Unhappy Girl
traveller,' which is noted as a game in which one can never succeed. The visit of an unknown lady, and at such a late hour, had not been kept secret from her: her imagination at once pictured a yawning abyss on the edge of which I was standing, and she was continually sighing and moaning and murmuring French sentences, quoted from a little manuscript book entitled Extraits de Lecture. In the evening I found on the little table at my bedside the treatise of De Girando, laid open at the chapter: On the evil influence of the passions. This book had been put in my room, at my aunt's instigation of course, by the elder of her companions, who was called in the household Amishka, from her resemblance to a little poodle of that name, and was a very sentimental, not to say romantic, though elderly, maiden lady. All the following day was spent in anxious expectation of Fustov's coming, of a letter from him, of news from the Ratsches' house . . . though on what ground could they have sent to me? Susanna would be more likely to expect me to visit her. . . . But I positively could not pluck up courage to see her without first talking to Fustov. I recalled every expression in my letter to him. . . . I thought it was strong enough; at last, late in the evening, he appeared.
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