“Why should we be angry?” they cried.

“But not now! It is too late to send to town for a Pushkin now. It is much too late, I say!” Colia was exclaiming in a loud voice. “I have told you so at least a hundred times.”

The young fellow accompanying the general was about twenty-eight, tall, and well built, with a handsome and clever face, and bright black eyes, full of fun and intelligence.

VII.

“What do _you_ know about our faces?” exclaimed the other two, in chorus.
“And pray what _is_ my position, madame? I have the greatest respect for you, personally; but--”
“How so? Did he bring the portrait for my husband?”
“You know we have hardly spoken to each other for a whole month. Ptitsin told me all about it; and the photo was lying under the table, and I picked it up.”

It was “heads.”

“Prince, I wish to place myself in a respectable position--I wish to esteem myself--and to--”

“No--oh no, fresher--more the correct card. I only became this like after the humiliation I suffered there.”
That the prince was almost in a fever was no more than the truth. He wandered about the park for a long while, and at last came to himself in a lonely avenue. He was vaguely conscious that he had already paced this particular walk--from that large, dark tree to the bench at the other end--about a hundred yards altogether--at least thirty times backwards and forwards.
“I don’t know that either.”
“What a silly idea,” said the actress. “Of course it is not the case. I have never stolen anything, for one.”

The general watched Gania’s confusion intently, and clearly did not like it.

“Aha! do--by all means! if you tan my hide you won’t turn me away from your society. You’ll bind me to you, with your lash, for ever. Ha, ha! here we are at the station, though.”
The door opened at this point, and in came Gania most unexpectedly.

“Practised hand--eh?”

With these words they all moved off towards the drawing-room, where another surprise awaited them. Aglaya had not only not laughed, as she had feared, but had gone to the prince rather timidly, and said to him:
He seized his paper in a desperate hurry; he fidgeted with it, and tried to sort it, but for a long while his trembling hands could not collect the sheets together. “He’s either mad or delirious,” murmured Rogojin. At last he began.
“Don’t deceive me now, prince--tell the truth. All these people persecute me with astounding questions--about you. Is there any ground for all these questions, or not? Come!”

“Yes, he’s in church.”

“What is that?” asked Nastasia Philipovna, gazing intently at Rogojin, and indicating the paper packet.

“And the money’s burning still,” Lebedeff lamented.
“That means that you have set Aglaya a riddle!” said Adelaida. “Guess it, Aglaya! But she’s pretty, prince, isn’t she?”
“I knew it had been written, but I would not have advised its publication,” said Lebedeff’s nephew, “because it is premature.”
He immediately judged from the faces of his daughters and Prince S. that there was a thunderstorm brewing, and he himself already bore evidences of unusual perturbation of mind.

“Oh, you needn’t fear! He’ll live another six weeks all right. Very likely he will recover altogether; but I strongly advise you to pack him off tomorrow.”

“‘Do you know what has suddenly come into my head?’ said I, suddenly--leaning further and further over the rail.

“I should not be surprised by anything. She is mad!” The general looked significantly at his host.
“I seem to have seen your eyes somewhere; but it cannot be! I have not seen you--I never was here before. I may have dreamed of you, I don’t know.”
“My legs won’t move,” said the prince; “it’s fear, I know. When my fear is over, I’ll get up--” “Yes--yes--oh; yes!”
Mrs. Epanchin put these questions hastily and brusquely, and when the prince answered she nodded her head sagely at each word he said.
“No--Aglaya--come, enough of this, you mustn’t behave like this,” said her father, in dismay.

“Well--that’ll do; now leave me.”

“Oh! it’s not a great matter to guess who told her. A thief! A thief in our family, and the head of the family, too!”

“I knew yesterday that you didn’t love me.”
“Religion!--I admit eternal life--and perhaps I always did admit it.
“He attacks education, he boasts of the fanaticism of the twelfth century, he makes absurd grimaces, and added to that he is by no means the innocent he makes himself out to be. How did he get the money to buy this house, allow me to ask?”
“What! he brought a candle with him to this place? That is, if the episode happened here; otherwise I can’t.”
All this filled poor Lizabetha’s mind with chaotic confusion. What on earth did it all mean? The most disturbing feature was the hedgehog. What was the symbolic signification of a hedgehog? What did they understand by it? What underlay it? Was it a cryptic message?

The prince hesitated. He perceived that he had said too much now.

“You may add that I have surely enough to think of, on my own account, without him; and therefore it is all the more surprising that I cannot tear my eyes and thoughts away from his detestable physiognomy.”
The Epanchin family, or at least the more serious members of it, were sometimes grieved because they seemed so unlike the rest of the world. They were not quite certain, but had at times a strong suspicion that things did not happen to them as they did to other people. Others led a quiet, uneventful life, while they were subject to continual upheavals. Others kept on the rails without difficulty; they ran off at the slightest obstacle. Other houses were governed by a timid routine; theirs was somehow different. Perhaps Lizabetha Prokofievna was alone in making these fretful observations; the girls, though not wanting in intelligence, were still young; the general was intelligent, too, but narrow, and in any difficulty he was content to say, “H’m!” and leave the matter to his wife. Consequently, on her fell the responsibility. It was not that they distinguished themselves as a family by any particular originality, or that their excursions off the track led to any breach of the proprieties. Oh no.