tch..."

"Stay, hold your tongue! I warn you that if you tell lies or conceal
anything, I'll ferret it out. Well?"

"Stepan Trofimovitch and I... as soon as I came to Hatovo..." Sofya
Matveyevna began almost breathlessly.

"Stay, hold your tongue, wait a bit! Why do you gabble like that? To
begin with, what sort of creature are you?"

Sofya Matveyevna told her after a fashion, giving a very brief account
of herself, however, beginning with Sevastopol. Varvara Petrovna
listened in silence, sitting up erect in her chair, looking sternly
straight into the speaker's eyes.

"Why are you so frightened? Why do you look at the ground? I like people
who look me straight in the face and hold their own with me. Go on."

She told of their meeting, of her books, of how Stepan Trofimovitch had
regaled the peasant woman with vodka... "That's right, that's right,
don't leave out the slightest detail," Varvara Petrovna encouraged her.

At last she described how they had set off, and how Stepan Trofimovitch
had gone on talking, "really ill by that time," and here had given an
account of his life from the very beginning, talking for some hours.
"Tell me about his life."

Sofya Matveyevna suddenly stopped and was completely nonplussed.

"I can't tell you anything about that, madam," she brought out, almost
crying; "besides, I could hardly understand a word of it."

"Nonsense! You must have understood something."

"He told a long time about a distinguished lady with black hair." Sofya
Matveyevna flushed terribly though she noticed Varvara Petrovna's fair
hair and her complete dissimilarity with the "brunette" of the story.

"Black-haired? What exactly? Come, speak!"

"How this grand lady was deeply in love with his honour all her life
long and for twenty years, but never dared to speak, and was shamefaced
before him because she was a very stout lady...."

"The fool!" Varvara Petrovna rapped out thoughtfully but resolutely.

Sofya Matveyevna was in tears by now.

"I don't know how to tell any of it properly, madam, because I was in a
great fright over his honour; and I couldn't understand, as he is such
an intellectual gentleman."

"It's not for a goose like you to judge of his intellect. Did he offer
you his hand?"

The speaker trembled.

"Did he fall in love with you? Speak! Did he offer you his hand?"
Varvara Petrovna shouted peremptorily.

"That was pretty much how it was," she murmured tearfully. "But I took
it