go or not?" he
began suddenly waving his hands again, entreating him to let him alone,
and saying that it was not his business, and that he knew nothing about
it.

Virginsky returned home dejected and greatly alarmed. It weighed upon
him that he had to hide it from his family; he was accustomed to tell
his wife everything; and if his feverish brain had not hatched a new
idea at that moment, a new plan of conciliation for further action, he
might have taken to his bed like Lyamshin. But this new idea sustained
him; what's more, he began impatiently awaiting the hour fixed, and set
off for the appointed spot earlier than was necessary. It was a very
gloomy place at the end of the huge park. I went there afterwards on
purpose to look at it. How sinister it must have looked on that chill
autumn evening! It was at the edge of an old wood belonging to the
Crown. Huge ancient pines stood out as vague sombre blurs in the
darkness. It was so dark that they could hardly see each other two paces
off, but Pyotr Stepanovitch, Liputin, and afterwards Erkel, brought
lanterns with them. At some unrecorded date in the past a rather
absurd-looking grotto had for some reason been built here of rough
unhewn stones. The table and benches in the grotto had long ago decayed
and fallen. Two hundred paces to the right was the bank of the third
pond of the park. These three ponds stretched one after another for
a mile from the house to the very end of the park. One could scarcely
imagine that any noise, a scream, or even a shot, could reach the
inhabitants of the Stavrogins' deserted house. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's
departure the previous day and Alexey Yegorytch's absence left only five
or six people in the house, all more or less invalided, so to speak. In
any case it might be assumed with perfect confidence that if cries or
shouts for help were heard by any of the inhabitants of the isolated
house they would only have excited terror; no one would have moved from
his warm stove or snug shelf to give assistance.

By twenty past six almost all of them except Erkel, who had been told
off to fetch Shatov, had turned up at the trysting-place. This time
Pyotr Stepanovitch was not late; he came with Tolkatchenko. Tolkatchenko
looked frowning and anxious; all his assumed determination and insolent
bravado had vanished. He scarcely left Pyotr Stepanovitch's side, and
seemed to have become all at once immensely devoted to him. He was
continually thru