He looked at me with a strange expression—alarmed, and at the same time anxious to alarm me. He certainly was getting more and more exasperated with somebody and about something as time went on and the police-cart did not appear; he was positively wrathful. Suddenly Nastasya, who had come from the kitchen into the passage for some reason, upset a clothes-horse there. Stepan Trofimovitch trembled and turned numb with terror as he sat; but when the noise was explained, he almost shrieked at Nastasya and, stamping, drove her back to the kitchen. A minute later he said, looking at me in despair: “I am ruined! Cher”—he sat down suddenly beside me and looked piteously into my face—“cher, it’s not Siberia I am afraid of, I swear. Oh, je vous jure!” (Tears positively stood in his eyes.) “It’s something else I fear.”
I saw from his expression that he wanted at last to tell me something of great importance which he had till now refrained from telling.
“I am afraid of disgrace,” he whispered mysteriously.
“What disgrace? On the contrary! Believe me, Stepan Trofimovitch, that all this will be explained to-day and will end to your advantage.…”
“Are you so sure that they will pardon me?”
“Pardon you? What! What a word! What have you done? I assure you you’ve done nothing.”
“Qu’en savez-vous; all my life has been … cher … They’ll remember everything … and if they find nothing, it will be worse still,” he added all of a sudden, unexpectedly.
“How do you mean it will be worse?”
“It will be worse.”
“I don’t understand.”