to
Virginsky himself in domestic life. There were only three ladies in the
room: the lady of the house, her eyebrowless sister, and Virginsky's
sister, a girl who had just arrived from Petersburg. Arina Prohorovna, a
good-looking and buxom woman of seven-and-twenty, rather dishevelled, in
an everyday greenish woollen dress, was sitting scanning the guests with
her bold eyes, and her look seemed in haste to say, "You see I am not
in the least afraid of anything." Miss Virginsky, a rosy-cheeked student
and a nihilist, who was also good-looking, short, plump and round as a
little ball, had settled herself beside Arina Prohorovna, almost in
her travelling clothes. She held a roll of paper in her hand, and
scrutinised the guests with impatient and roving eyes. Virginsky himself
was rather unwell that evening, but he came in and sat in an easy chair
by the tea-table. All the guests were sitting down too, and the orderly
way in which they were ranged on chairs suggested a meeting. Evidently
all were expecting something and were filling up the interval with loud
but irrelevant conversation. When Stavrogin and Verhovensky appeared
there was a sudden hush.

But I must be allowed to give a few explanations to make things clear.

I believe that all these people had come together in the agreeable
expectation of hearing something particularly interesting, and had
notice of it beforehand. They were the flower of the reddest Radicalism
of our ancient town, and had been carefully picked out by Virginsky for
this "meeting." I may remark, too, that some of them (though not very
many) had never visited him before. Of course most of the guests had no
clear idea why they had been summoned. It was true that at that time
all took Pyotr Stepanovitch for a fully authorised emissary from abroad;
this idea had somehow taken root among them at once and naturally
flattered them. And yet among the citizens assembled ostensibly to
keep a name-day, there were some who had been approached with definite
proposals. Pyotr Verhovensky had succeeded in getting together a
"quintet" amongst us like the one he had already formed in Moscow and,
as appeared later, in our province among the officers. It was said that
he had another in X province. This quintet of the elect were sitting now
at the general table, and very skilfully succeeded in giving themselves
the air of being quite ordinary people, so that no one could have known
them. They were--since it is no l