Ganya finally started to scowl; maybe Varya had deliberately gone deeper into the subject in order to penetrate to his real thoughts. But again a shout came from upstairs.

"I'll throw him out!" Ganya simply roared, as if glad to vent his vexation.

"And then he'll go and disgrace us again everywhere, like yesterday."

"How—like yesterday? What do you mean like yesterday? Did he . . ." Ganya suddenly became terribly alarmed.

"Ah, my God, don't you know?" Varya recollected herself.

"How ... so it's really true that he was there?" Ganya exclaimed, flushing with shame and fury. "My God, you were just there! Did you find anything out? Was the old man there? Was he or wasn't he?"

And Ganya rushed to the door; Varya dashed to him and seized him with both arms.

"What is it? Where are you going?" she said. "If you let him out now, he'll do something worse, he'll go to everybody! . . ."

"What did he do there? What did he say?"

"They weren't able to tell and didn't understand themselves; he just frightened them all. He came to see Ivan Fyodorovich—he wasn't there; he demanded to see Lizaveta Prokofyevna. First he asked her for a job, to enter the service, then he started complaining about me, my husband, and you especially . . . said all kinds of things."

"You couldn't find out?" Ganya was trembling as if in hysterics.

"Oh, come now! He himself barely understood what he was saying, and maybe they didn't tell me all of it."

Ganya clutched his head and ran to the window; Varya sat down by the other window.

"Aglaya's funny," she suddenly observed, "she stops me and says: 'Convey my particular personal respects to your parents; one of these days I shall probably find an occasion to see your father.' And she says it so seriously. It's terribly odd . . ."

"Not mockingly? Not mockingly?"

"Precisely not; that's the odd thing."

"Does she know about the old man or doesn't she, what do you think?"

"It's not known to them in the house, I have no doubt of that; but you've given me an idea: maybe Aglaya does know. She alone knows, because the sisters were also surprised that she sent her greetings to father so seriously. Why on earth precisely to him? If she knows, then it's the prince who told her!"

"It takes no cleverness to find out who told her! A thief! Just what we needed. A thief in our family, 'the head of the family'!"

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Varya, becoming quite angry. "A drunken incident, nothing more. And who came up with it? Lebedev, the prince . . . fine ones they are; palatial minds. I don't care a whit about it."

"The old man's a thief and a drunkard," Ganya went on biliously, "I'm a pauper, my sister's husband is a usurer—Aglaya had something to covet! Pretty, I must say!"

"That sister's husband, the usurer, is your ..."

"Feeder, is that it? Kindly don't mince words."

"Why are you angry?" Varya recollected herself. "You don't understand anything, just like a schoolboy. Do you think all that could harm you in Aglaya's eyes? You don't know her character; she'd turn her back on the foremost suitor, but she'd be pleased to run to some student in a garret and starve to death—that's her dream! You've never been able to understand how interesting you'd become in her eyes if you could endure our circumstances with firmness and pride. The prince caught her on his hook, first of all, because he never tried to catch her and, second, because in everybody's eyes he's an idiot. This one thing alone, that she'll muddle up the whole family because of him—that's what she likes now. Ah, none of you understands anything!"

"Well, we've yet to see whether we understand or not," Ganya

muttered mysteriously, "only all the same I wouldn't want her to find out about the old man. I thought the prince would keep it to himself and not tell. He kept Lebedev from telling, and he didn't want to tell me everything either, when I badgered him . . ."

"So you can see for yourself that everything's known already even without him. But what is it to you now? What is there to hope for? And if there were any hope left, it would only give you a look of suffering in her eyes."

"Well, in the face of a scandal even she would turn coward, despite all her love of novels. Everything up to a certain limit, and everybody up to a certain limit—you're all the same."

"Aglaya would turn coward?" Varya flared up, looking contemptuously at her brother. "You really have a mean little soul, though! None of you is worth anything. She may be funny and eccentric, but she's a thousand times nobler than any of us."

"Well, never mind, never mind, don't be angry," Ganya again muttered smugly.

"I'm only sorry for mother," Varya went on. "I'm afraid this story with father may get to her, oh, I'm afraid!"

"And it surely has," Ganya observed.

Varya got up to go upstairs to Nina Alexandrovna, but stopped and looked intently at her brother.

"Who could have told her?"

"Ippolit, it must be. I suppose he considered it his prime pleasure to report it to mother, as soon as he moved in with us."

"But how does he know, pray tell? The prince and Lebedev decided not to tell anyone, even Kolya doesn't know."

"Ippolit? He found it out himself. You can't imagine what a cunning creature he is; what a gossip he is; what a nose he's got for smelling out everything bad, everything scandalous. Well, believe it or not, but I'm convinced that he's already got Aglaya in his hands! And if he hasn't, he will. Rogozhin has also entered into relations with him. How does the prince not notice it! And how he wants to do me a bad turn now! He considers me his personal enemy, I saw through him long ago, and why, what is it to him, he'll die anyway—I can't understand it! But I'll fool him; I'll do him a bad turn, and not he me, you'll see."

"Why did you lure him here, then, if you hate him so much? And is it worth it to do him a bad turn?"

"It was you who advised me to lure him here."

"I thought he'd be useful; and do you know that he has now

fallen in love with Aglaya himself and has written to her? They questioned me . . . it's just possible that he's written to Lizaveta Prokofyevna, too."

"He's no danger in that sense!" Ganya said with a spiteful laugh. "However, there's probably something else in it. He may very well be in love, because he's a boy! But... he wouldn't write anonymous letters to the old lady. He's such a spiteful, worthless, self-satisfied mediocrity! . . . I'm convinced, I know for certain, that he represented me to her as an intriguer, and began with that. I confess that like a fool I let things slip to him at first; I thought he'd take up my interests just to be revenged on the prince; he's such a cunning creature! Oh, now I've seen through him completely. And the theft he heard about from his own mother, the captain's widow. If the old man ventured to do that, it was for her sake. Suddenly, out of the blue, he tells me that 'the general' has promised his mother four hundred roubles, and he does it just like that, out of the blue, without any ceremony. Then I understood everything. And he just peeks into my eyes with some kind of relish; he probably also told mother solely for the pleasure of breaking her heart. And why doesn't he die, pray tell? He promised to die in three weeks, but he's even grown fatter here! He doesn't cough any more; yesterday evening he said himself that he hadn't coughed up blood for two days."