| “I wished to find out from you,” she said, firmly, “by what right you dare to meddle with his feelings for me? By what right you dared send me those letters? By what right do you continually remind both me and him that you love him, after you yourself threw him over and ran away from him in so insulting and shameful a way?” |
| “What do you say, sir?” growled the general, taking a step towards him. |
Both had risen, and were gazing at one another with pallid faces.
| “And you can marry her now, Parfen! What will come of it all?” said the prince, with dread in his voice. |
| Aglaya stamped her foot. |
“But--why in the world--and the money? Was it all there?”
“I will wait here,” he stammered. “I should like to surprise her. ....”“Ferdishenko has gone, you say?”
| But gradually the consciousness crept back into the minds of each one present that the prince had just made her an offer of marriage. The situation had, therefore, become three times as fantastic as before. |
| “I’ve--I’ve had a reward for my meanness--I’ve had a slap in the face,” he concluded, tragically. |
“What best wishes?”
| “It’s true then, Lebedeff, that you advertise to lend money on gold or silver articles?” |
| “I--I thought it was half-past nine!” |
Hippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the last speaker with glittering eyes, said: “You don’t like me at all!” A few laughed at this, but not all.
“Varia does it from pride, and likes showing off, and giving herself airs. As to my mother, I really do admire her--yes, and honour her. Hippolyte, hardened as he is, feels it. He laughed at first, and thought it vulgar of her--but now, he is sometimes quite touched and overcome by her kindness. H’m! You call that being strong and good? I will remember that! Gania knows nothing about it. He would say that it was encouraging vice.”
“You wouldn’t believe how you have pained and astonished me,” cried the prince.
| A minute afterwards, Evgenie Pavlovitch reappeared on the terrace, in great agitation. |
| For the first five minutes the reader’s voice continued to tremble, and he read disconnectedly and unevenly; but gradually his voice strengthened. Occasionally a violent fit of coughing stopped him, but his animation grew with the progress of the reading--as did also the disagreeable impression which it made upon his audience,--until it reached the highest pitch of excitement. |
“Come, come, what does all this mean?” cried Colia beside himself at last. “What is it? What has happened to you? Why don’t you wish to come back home? Why have you gone out of your mind, like this?”
Lebedeff ran up promptly to explain the arrival of all these gentlemen. He was himself somewhat intoxicated, but the prince gathered from his long-winded periods that the party had assembled quite naturally, and accidentally.
He burst out laughing again, but it was the laughter of a madman. Lizabetha Prokofievna approached him anxiously and seized his arm. He stared at her for a moment, still laughing, but soon his face grew serious. “Well, but--have you taken the purse away now?”“How was I to tell?” replied Rogojin, with an angry laugh. “I did my best to catch her tripping in Moscow, but did not succeed. However, I caught hold of her one day, and said: ‘You are engaged to be married into a respectable family, and do you know what sort of a woman you are? _That’s_ the sort of woman you are,’ I said.”
| The boxer was dying to get in a few words; owing, no doubt, to the presence of the ladies, he was becoming quite jovial. |
“You are shockingly naive, prince,” said Lebedeff’s nephew in mocking tones.
“I hear,” said the prince in a whisper, his eyes fixed on Rogojin.
“It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: ‘Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him--supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and they _must_ have so seen it)--how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?’
| “Oh! I suppose the present she wished to make to you, when she took you into the dining-room, was her confidence, eh?” |
| “This is too horrible,” said the general, starting to his feet. All were standing up now. Nastasia was absolutely beside herself. |