so it
seemed to me.

"Wonderfully queer man," Mavriky Nikolaevitch observed aloud.

III

He certainly was queer, but in all this there was a very great deal not
clear to me. There was something underlying it all. I simply did not
believe in this publication; then that stupid letter, in which there
was an offer, only too barefaced, to give information and produce
"documents," though they were all silent about that, and talked of
something quite different; finally that printing-press and Shatov's
sudden exit, just because they spoke of a printing-press. All this led
me to imagine that something had happened before I came in of which I
knew nothing; and, consequently, that it was no business of mine and
that I was in the way. And, indeed, it was time to take leave, I had
stayed long enough for the first call. I went up to say good-bye to
Lizaveta Nikolaevna.

She seemed to have forgotten that I was in the room, and was still
standing in the same place by the table with her head bowed, plunged in
thought, gazing fixedly at one spot on the carpet.

"Ah, you, too, are going, good-bye," she murmured in an ordinary
friendly tone. "Give my greetings to Stepan Trofimovitch, and persuade
him to come and see me as soon as he can. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, Anton
Lavrentyevitch is going. Excuse maman's not being able to come out and
say good-bye to you...."

I went out and had reached the bottom of the stairs when a footman
suddenly overtook me at the street door.

"My lady begs you to come back...."

"The mistress, or Lizaveta Nikolaevna?"

"The young lady."

I found Liza not in the big room where we had been sitting, but in the
reception-room next to it. The door between it and the drawing-room,
where Mavriky Nikolaevitch was left alone, was closed.

Liza smiled to me but was pale. She was standing in the middle of the
room in evident indecision, visibly struggling with herself; but she
suddenly took me by the hand, and led me quickly to the window.

"I want to see _her_ at once," she whispered, bending upon me a
burning, passionate, impatient glance, which would not admit a hint of
opposition. "I must see her with my own eyes, and I beg you to help
me."

She was in a perfect frenzy, and--in despair.

"Who is it you want to see, Lizaveta Nikolaevna?" I inquired in dismay.

"That Lebyadkin's sister, that lame girl.... Is it true that she's
lame?"

I was astounded.

"I have never seen her, but I've heard that sh