“Heavens, Dounia,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began, as soon as they were in the street, “I really feel relieved myself at coming away--more at ease. How little did I think yesterday in the train that I could ever be glad of that.”
“I tell you again, mother, he is still very ill. Don’t you see it? Perhaps worrying about us upset him. We must be patient, and much, much can be forgiven.”
“Well, you were not very patient!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna caught her up, hotly and jealously. “Do you know, Dounia, I was looking at you two. You are the very portrait of him, and not so much in face as in soul. You are both melancholy, both morose and hot-tempered, both haughty and both generous.... Surely he can’t be an egoist, Dounia. Eh? When I think of what is in store for us this evening, my heart sinks!”
“Don’t be uneasy, mother. What must be, will be.”
“Dounia, only think what a position we are in! What if Pyotr Petrovitch breaks it off?” poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna blurted out, incautiously.
“He won’t be worth much if he does,” answered Dounia, sharply and contemptuously.
“We did well to come away,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurriedly broke in. “He was in a hurry about some business or other. If he gets out and has a breath of air... it is fearfully close in his room.... But where is one to get a breath of air here? The very streets here feel like shut-up rooms. Good heavens! what a town!... stay... this side... they will crush you--carrying something. Why, it is a piano they have got, I declare... how they push!... I am very much afraid of that young woman, too.”
“What young woman, mother?”
“Why, that Sofya Semyonovna, who was there just now.”
“Why?”
“I have a presentiment, Dounia. Well, you may believe it or not, but as soon as she came in, that very minute, I felt that she was the chief cause of the trouble....”
“Nothing of the sort!” cried Dounia, in vexation. “What nonsense, with your presentiments, mother! He only made her acquaintance the evening before, and he did not know her when she came in.”
“Well, you will see.... She worries me; but you will see, you will see! I was so frightened. She was gazing at me with those eyes. I could scarcely sit still in my chair when he began introducing her, do you remember? It seems so strange, but Pyotr Petrovitch writes like that about her, and he introduces her to us--to you! So he must think a great deal of her.”
“People will write anything. We were talked about and written about, too. Have you forgotten? I am sure that she is a good girl, and that it is all nonsense.”
“God grant it may be!”
“And Pyotr Petrovitch is a contemptible slanderer,” Dounia snapped out, suddenly.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna was crushed; the conversation was not resumed.