me too, Stepan Trofimovitch, that will mean a great deal to me,
a great deal...."

Stepan Trofimovitch made her a very, very low bow.

"It's for you to decide, Darya Pavlovna; you know that you are perfectly
free in the whole matter! You have been, and you are now, and you always
will be," Varvara Petrovna concluded impressively.

"Bah! Now I understand it all!" cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, slapping
himself on the forehead. "But... but what a position I am put in by
all this! Darya Pavlovna, please forgive me!... What do you call your
treatment of me, eh?" he said, addressing his father.

"Pierre, you might speak to me differently, mightn't you, my boy,"
Stepan Trofimovitch observed quite quietly.

"Don't cry out, please," said Pierre, with a wave of his hand. "Believe
me, it's all your sick old nerves, and crying out will do no good at
all. You'd better tell me instead, why didn't you warn me since you
might have supposed I should speak out at the first chance?"

Stepan Trofimovitch looked searchingly at him.

"Pierre, you who know so much of what goes on here, can you really have
known nothing of this business and have heard nothing about it?"

"What? What a set! So it's not enough to be a child in your old age,
you must be a spiteful child too! Varvara Petrovna, did you hear what he
said?"

There was a general outcry; but then suddenly an incident took place
which no one could have anticipated.

VIII

First of all I must mention that, for the last two or three minutes
Lizaveta Nikolaevna had seemed to be possessed by a new impulse; she
was whispering something hurriedly to her mother, and to Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, who bent down to listen. Her face was agitated, but at the
same time it had a look of resolution. At last she got up from her
seat in evident haste to go away, and hurried her mother whom Mavriky
Nikolaevitch began helping up from her low chair. But it seemed they
were not destined to get away without seeing everything to the end.

Shatov, who had been forgotten by every one in his corner (not far from
Lizaveta Nikolaevna), and who did not seem to know himself why he went
on sitting there, got up from his chair, and walked, without haste, with
resolute steps right across the room to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, looking
him straight in the face. The latter noticed him approaching at some
distance, and faintly smiled, but when Shatov was close to him he left
off smiling.

When Shatov stood still fa