“At once... at once... in one moment!”
“Come in please, prince!”
“Let’s go and hear the band, then,” said Lizabetha Prokofievna, angrily rising from her place.
“Why did you add that?--There! Now you are cross again,” said the prince, wondering.
Hippolyte braced himself up a little. “What? You don’t mean to say that he went there yesterday!” cried Gania, flushing red with shame and anger. “Good heavens, Varia! Speak! You have just been there. _Was_ he there or not, _quick?_” And Gania rushed for the door. Varia followed and caught him by both hands.

He could not believe that this was the same haughty young girl who had once so proudly shown him Gania’s letter. He could not understand how that proud and austere beauty could show herself to be such an utter child--a child who probably did not even now understand some words.

“Well!--and what’s the meaning of the ‘poor knight,’ eh?”

To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.

“Yes, I have,” said Rogojin.

So saying, Rogojin crossed the road.

“Aglaya, don’t! This is unfair,” cried the prince, deeply distressed.

“Why? Because you have suffered more than we have?”
“What is the matter, excellency? I know how to keep my place. When I said just now that we, you and I, were the lion and the ass of Kryloff’s fable, of course it is understood that I take the role of the ass. Your excellency is the lion of which the fable remarks:
“Why so?” asked the prince uneasily.
“Let’s all go to my boudoir,” she said, “and they shall bring some coffee in there. That’s the room where we all assemble and busy ourselves as we like best,” she explained. “Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don’t work too much, either. Here we are, now; sit down, prince, near the fire and talk to us. I want to hear you relate something. I wish to make sure of you first and then tell my old friend, Princess Bielokonski, about you. I wish you to know all the good people and to interest them. Now then, begin!”

“If it’s all settled, Gania, then of course Mr. Ptitsin is right,” said Nina Alexandrovna. “Don’t frown. You need not worry yourself, Gania; I shall ask you no questions. You need not tell me anything you don’t like. I assure you I have quite submitted to your will.” She said all this, knitting away the while as though perfectly calm and composed.

“Nastasia Philipovna! Nastasia Philipovna!”

At the door they met Gania coming in.

We may add that to a business man like General Epanchin the present position of affairs was most unsatisfactory. He hated the uncertainty in which they had been, perforce, left. However, he decided to say no more about it, and merely to look on, and take his time and tune from Lizabetha Prokofievna.
“You don’t answer me; perhaps you think I am very fond of you?” added Hippolyte, as though the words had been drawn from him.
“Where--where?”
“Thank God--thank God!” said Lizabetha Prokofievna to herself, without quite knowing why she felt so relieved.
“I suppose you have felt that in your own case,” said Aglaya.
“Look here, Aglaya--” began the general.
In reply to a very guarded question of her sisters’, Aglaya had answered coldly, but exceedingly haughtily:
“How he could hate me and tell scandalous stories about me, living among children as he did, is what I cannot understand. Children soothe and heal the wounded heart. I remember there was one poor fellow at our professor’s who was being treated for madness, and you have no idea what those children did for him, eventually. I don’t think he was mad, but only terribly unhappy. But I’ll tell you all about him another day. Now I must get on with this story.
She went on talking and chatting without a pause, with occasional little bursts of laughter between.
“I am very glad,” said the prince.
At first Muishkin had not cared to make any reply to his sundry questions, and only smiled in response to Hippolyte’s advice to “run for his life--abroad, if necessary. There are Russian priests everywhere, and one can get married all over the world.”

“No; because I am unworthy of my sufferings, if you like!”

The prince rose.
Four persons entered, led by General Ivolgin, in a state of great excitement, and talking eloquently.