But upon my word, Varvara Petrovna, he gave me a fright, and I really was half prepared to save him. He really made me feel ashamed. Did he expect me to hold a knife to his throat, or what? Am I such a merciless creditor? He writes something here of a dowry.⁠ ⁠… But are you really going to get married, Stepan Trofimovitch? That would be just like you, to say a lot for the sake of talking. Ach, Varvara Petrovna, I’m sure you must be blaming me now, and just for my way of talking too.⁠ ⁠…”

“On the contrary, on the contrary, I see that you are driven out of all patience, and, no doubt you have had good reason,” Varvara Petrovna answered spitefully. She had listened with spiteful enjoyment to all the “candid outbursts” of Pyotr Stepanovitch, who was obviously playing a part (what part I did not know then, but it was unmistakable, and overacted indeed).

“On the contrary,” she went on, “I’m only too grateful to you for speaking; but for you I might not have known of it. My eyes are opened for the first time for twenty years. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, you said just now that you had been expressly informed; surely Stepan Trofimovitch hasn’t written to you in the same style?”