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`You're mistaken, Mrs Linton,' said I. `They humour you: I know what there would be to do if they did not. You can well afford to indulge their passing whims as long as their business is to anticipate all your desires. You may, however, fall out, at last, over something of equal consequence to both sides; and then those you term weak are very capable of being as obstinate as you.'

Then they hear the sound again, coming closer now, from the

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`Yes, that's someone from the railway station,' he thought, `just the time to be here from the Moscow train.... Who could it be? What if it's brother Nikolai? He did say: ``I may go to the waters, or I may come down to you.'' He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute that his brother Nikolai's presence should come to his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and expectation, he now hoped with all his heart that it was his brother. He spurred on his horse, and as he rode out from behind the acacias, he saw a hired troika from the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. `Oh, if it were only some pleasant person one could talk to a little!' he thought.

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(speaks some Italilan, presenting her with some flowers)

Because if it is, I'm warning you--

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