sitting in the kitchen and not allowed to leave it. Orders were
given that no one was to be admitted. The wife of the Colonel, her
sister, and the governess, though they had been initiated into the
secret, kept up a pretence of knowing nothing; they sat in the
dining-room and did not show themselves in the drawing-room or the
hall.

Sasha Uskov, the young man of twenty-five who was the cause of all
the commotion, had arrived some time before, and by the advice of
kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, his uncle, who was taking his part,
he sat meekly in the hall by the door leading to the study, and
prepared himself to make an open, candid explanation.

The other side of the door, in the study, a family council was being
held. The subject under discussion was an exceedingly disagreeable
and delicate one. Sasha Uskov had cashed at one of the banks a false
promissory note, and it had become due for payment three days before,
and now his two paternal uncles and Ivan Markovitch, the brother
of his dead mother, were deciding the question whether they should
pay the money and save the family honour, or wash their hands of
it and leave the case to go for trial.

To outsiders who have no personal interest in the matter such
questions seem simple; for those who are so unfortunate as to have
to decide them in earnest they are extremely difficult. The uncles
had been talking for a long time, but the problem seemed no nearer
decision.

"My friends!" said the uncle who was a colonel, and there was a
note of exhaustion and bitterness in his voice. "Who says that
family honour is a mere convention? I don't say that at all. I am
only warning you against a false view; I am pointing out the
possibility of an unpardonable mistake. How can you fail to see it?
I am not speaking Chinese; I am speaking Russian!"

"My dear fellow, we do understand," Ivan Markovitch protested mildly.

"How can you understand if you say that I don't believe in family
honour? I repeat once more: fa-mil-y ho-nour fal-sely un-der-stood
is a prejudice! Falsely understood! That's what I say: whatever may
be the motives for screening a scoundrel, whoever he may be, and
helping him to escape punishment, it is contrary to law and unworthy
of a gentleman. It's not saving the family honour; it's civic
cowardice! Take the army, for instance. . . . The honour of the
army is more precious to us than any other honour, yet we don't
screen our guilty members, but condemn them.