d you had fixed on her for your old age? What prudence! What
foresight! Aie, who's that?"

At the farther end of the room a door opened a crack; a head was thrust
in and vanished again hurriedly.

"Is that you, Alexey Yegorytch?" asked Stavrogin.

"No, it's only I." Pyotr Stepanovitch thrust himself half in again.
"How do you do, Lizaveta Nikolaevna? Good morning, anyway. I guessed I
should find you both in this room. I have come for one moment literally,
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. I was anxious to have a couple of words with
you at all costs... absolutely necessary... only a few words!"

Stavrogin moved towards him but turned back to Liza at the third step.

"If you hear anything directly, Liza, let me tell you I am to blame for
it!"

She started and looked at him in dismay; but he hurriedly went out.

II

The room from which Pyotr Stepanovitch had peeped in was a large
oval vestibule. Alexey Yegorytch had been sitting there before Pyotr
Stepanovitch came in, but the latter sent him away. Stavrogin closed the
door after him and stood expectant. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked rapidly
and searchingly at him.

"Well?"

"If you know already," said Pyotr Stepanovitch hurriedly, his eyes
looking as though they would dive into Stavrogin's soul, "then, of
course, we are none of us to blame, above all not you, for it's such a
concatenation... such a coincidence of events... in brief, you can't be
legally implicated and I've rushed here to tell you so beforehand."

"Have they been burnt? murdered?"

"Murdered but not burnt, that's the trouble, but I give you my word of
honour that it's not been my fault, however much you may suspect me,
eh? Do you want the whole truth: you see the idea really did cross my
mind--you hinted it yourself, not seriously, but teasing me (for, of
course, you would not hint it seriously), but I couldn't bring myself
to it, and wouldn't bring myself to it for anything, not for a hundred
roubles--and what was there to be gained by it, I mean for me, for
me...." (He was in desperate haste and his talk was like the clacking of a
rattle.) "But what a coincidence of circumstances: I gave that drunken
fool Lebyadkin two hundred and thirty roubles of my own money (do you
hear, my own money, there wasn't a rouble of yours and, what's more, you
know it yourself) the day before yesterday, in the evening--do you hear,
not yesterday after the matinee, but the day before yesterday, make a
note of it: it's a v