We were all standing in the doorway. It was the moment when hosts and guests hurriedly exchange the last and most cordial words, and then part to their mutual gratification.
“The reason he’s so cross to-day,” Liputin dropped all at once, as it were casually, when he was just going out of the room, “is because he had a disturbance to-day with Captain Lebyadkin over his sister. Captain Lebyadkin thrashes that precious sister of his, the mad girl, every day with a whip, a real Cossack whip, every morning and evening. So Alexey Nilitch has positively taken the lodge so as not to be present. Well, good-bye.”
“A sister? An invalid? With a whip?” Stepan Trofimovitch cried out, as though he had suddenly been lashed with a whip himself. “What sister? What Lebyadkin?” All his former terror came back in an instant.
“Lebyadkin! Oh, that’s the retired captain; he used only to call himself a lieutenant before.…”
“Oh, what is his rank to me? What sister? Good heavens!… You say Lebyadkin? But there used to be a Lebyadkin here.…”
“That’s the very man. ‘Our’ Lebyadkin, at Virginsky’s, you remember?”
“But he was caught with forged papers?”
“Well, now he’s come back. He’s been here almost three weeks and under the most peculiar circumstances.”
“Why, but he’s a scoundrel?”
“As though no one could be a scoundrel among us,” Liputin grinned suddenly, his knavish little eyes seeming to peer into Stepan Trofimovitch’s soul.