by which my father
expected to make a very pretty sum. It was not the loss of the
money, however much it may have been--no, it was the treachery--which
embittered and enraged my father. He could not forgive swindling.

"See there! we have discovered a new saint," said he, trembling with
rage and his teeth chattering as if he had a chill. (I happened to be
in the room, a witness of this painful scene.) "Very well, from this
day forth all is over between us. The heavens are above us, and there
is the door. I have nothing more to do with you, nor you with me. You
are too honest for me, sir: how could we get along together? But you
sha'n't have a bit of ground to stand on, nor a roof over your head."

In vain did Latkin beg for mercy and fling himself on the ground
before him: in vain did he try to explain what had filled his own soul
with painful astonishment. "Just consider, Porphyr Petrovitch," he
stammered forth. "I did it without any hope of gain: I cut my own
throat."

My father was immovable, and Latkin never more set foot in the house.
It seemed as if fate had determined to fulfill my father's last evil
wishes. Soon after the breach between them, which took place about two
years before my story began, Latkin's wife died: it is true, however,
that she had for a long time been ill. His second daughter, a child of
three years, became deaf and dumb one day from fright: a swarm of bees
lit on her head. Latkin himself had a stroke of paralysis and fell
into the most extreme misery. How he managed to scrape along at all,
what he lived on, it was hard to imagine. He dwelt in a tumbledown
hovel but a short distance from our house. His eldest daughter,
Raissa, lived with him and managed for him as well as she could. This
very Raissa is the new person whom I must introduce into my story.

XII.

So long as her father was on friendly terms with mine we used to see
her continually: she would sometimes spend whole days at our house,
sewing or knitting with her swift, delicate fingers. She was a tall,
somewhat slender girl, with thoughtful gray eyes in a pale oval face.
She spoke little, but what she said was sensible, and she uttered
it in a low, clear voice, without opening her mouth much and without
showing her teeth: when she laughed--which was seldom--she showed them
all suddenly, large and white as almonds. I also remember her walk,
which was light and elastic, with a little spring in every step: it
seemed to m