"Violence, you wicked girl! It is you that are violent."
"Will you come out into the parlour, aunt?"
"No, I will not come out into the parlour. I will not stir from this spot till I have told your father all that I think about it. Ill, indeed! What matters illness when it is a question of eternal damnation!" Madame Zamenoy put so much stress upon the latter word that her brother-in-law almost jumped from under the bed-clothes. Nina raised herself, as she was standing, to her full height, and a smile of derision came upon her face. "Oh, yes! I daresay you do not mind it," said Madame Zamenoy. "I daresay you can laugh now at all the pains of hell. Castaways such as you are always blind to their own danger; but your father, I hope, has not fallen so far as to care nothing for his religion, though he seems to have forgotten what is due to his family."
"I have forgotten nothing," said old Balatka.
"Why then do you not forbid her to do this thing?" demanded Madame Zamenoy. But the old man had recognised too well the comparative security of silence to be drawn into argument, and therefore merely hid himself more completely among the clothes. "Am I to get no answer from you, Josef?" said Madame Zamenoy. No answer came, and therefore she was driven to turn again upon Nina.
"Why are you doing this thing, you poor deluded creature? Is it the man's money that tempts you?"
"It is not the man's money. If money could tempt me, I could have it elsewhere, as you know."
"It cannot be love for such a man as that. Do you not know that he and his father between them have robbed your father of everything?"
"I know nothing of the kind."
"They have; and he is now making a fool of you in order that he may get whatever remains."