old lady in
alarm, and her cap slipped off her head. "Who is going to deceive
us? Lord, have mercy on us!"

"He is deceiving us, mamma!" repeated her daughter, and her chin
began to quiver.

"How do you know?" cried the old lady, turning pale.

"Our flat is locked up. The porter tells me that Alyosha has not
been home once for these five days. He is not living at home! He
is not at home, not at home!"

She waved her hands and burst into loud weeping, uttering nothing
but: "Not at home! Not at home!"

She began to be hysterical.

"What's the meaning of it?" muttered the old woman in horror. "Why,
he wrote the day before yesterday that he never leaves the flat!
Where is he sleeping? Holy Saints!"

Nadyezhda Filippovna felt so faint that she could not take off her
hat. She looked about her blankly, as though she had been drugged,
and convulsively clutched at her mother's arms.

"What a person to trust: a porter!" said the old lady, fussing round
her daughter and crying. "What a jealous girl you are! He is not
going to deceive you, and how dare he? We are not just anybody.
Though we are of the merchant class, yet he has no right, for you
are his lawful wife! We can take proceedings! I gave twenty thousand
roubles with you! You did not want for a dowry!"

And the old lady herself sobbed and gesticulated, and she felt
faint, too, and lay down on her trunk. Neither of them noticed that
patches of blue had made their appearance in the sky, that the
clouds were more transparent, that the first sunbeam was cautiously
gliding over the wet grass in the garden, that with renewed gaiety
the sparrows were hopping about the puddles which reflected the
racing clouds.

Towards evening Kvashin arrived. Before leaving town he had gone
to his flat and had learned from the porter that his wife had come
in his absence.

"Here I am," he said gaily, coming into his mother-in-law's room
and pretending not to notice their stern and tear-stained faces.
"Here I am! It's five days since we have seen each other!"

He rapidly kissed his wife's hand and his mother-in-law's, and with
the air of man delighted at having finished a difficult task, he
lolled in an arm-chair.

"Ough!" he said, puffing out all the air from his lungs. "Here I
have been worried to death. I have scarcely sat down. For almost
five days now I have been, as it were, bivouacking. I haven't been
to the flat once, would you believe it? I have been busy the whole
ti