“No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much to be pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t need her, and she’s even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am even more so. I like being alone. … Father likes her very much. She and Mikháil Ivánovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: ‘We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she was homeless after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads splendidly.”
“To be quite frank, Marie, I expect Father’s character sometimes makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?” Prince Andréy asked suddenly.
Princess Márya was first surprised and then aghast at this question.
“For me? For me? … Trying for me! …” said she.
“He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he’s getting