ed that he was not to
be looked at from the ordinary standpoint. I may remark that he took up
an extremely resentful attitude about Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's duel.
It took him unawares. He turned positively green when he was told of it.
Perhaps his vanity was wounded: he only heard of it next day when every
one knew of it.

"You had no right to fight, you know," he whispered to Stavrogin, five
days later, when he chanced to meet him at the club. It was remarkable
that they had not once met during those five days, though Pyotr
Stepanovitch had dropped in at Varvara Petrovna's almost every day.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him in silence with an absent-minded
air, as though not understanding what was the matter, and he went on
without stopping. He was crossing the big hall of the club on his way to
the refreshment room.

"You've been to see Shatov too.... You mean to make it known about Marya
Timofyevna," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered, running after him, and, as
though not thinking of what he was doing he clutched at his shoulder.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch shook his hand off and turned round quickly
to him with a menacing scowl. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him with
a strange, prolonged smile. It all lasted only one moment. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch walked on.

II

He went to the "old man" straight from Varvara Petrovna's, and he was
in such haste simply from spite, that he might revenge himself for an
insult of which I had no idea at that time. The fact is that at
their last interview on the Thursday of the previous week, Stepan
Trofimovitch, though the dispute was one of his own beginning, had
ended by turning Pyotr Stepanovitch out with his stick. He concealed the
incident from me at the time. But now, as soon as Pyotr Stepanovitch ran
in with his everlasting grin, which was so naively condescending, and
his unpleasantly inquisitive eyes peering into every corner, Stepan
Trofimovitch at once made a signal aside to me, not to leave the room.
This was how their real relations came to be exposed before me, for on
this occasion I heard their whole conversation.

Stepan Trofimovitch was sitting stretched out on a lounge. He had grown
thin and sallow since that Thursday. Pyotr Stepanovitch seated himself
beside him with a most familiar air, unceremoniously tucking his legs up
under him, and taking up more room on the lounge than deference to his
father should have allowed. Stepan Trofimovitch moved aside, in silen