“I am sorry, extremely sorry, to see you in such a strange condition of mind, Paul Alexandrovitch! What expressions you use! You do not take the trouble to choose your words before ladies—oh, fie!”
“Before ladies? Ho ho! You—you are—you are anything you like—but not a lady!” yelled Mosgliakoff.
I don't quite know what he meant, but it was something very terrible, you may be sure!
Maria Alexandrovna looked benignly in his face:
“Sit down!” she said, sorrowfully, showing him a chair, the same that the old prince had reclined in a quarter of an hour before.
“But listen, will you listen, Maria Alexandrovna? You look at me just as though you were not the least to blame; in fact, as though I were the guilty party! Really, Maria Alexandrovna, this is a little too much of a good thing! No human being can stand that sort of thing, Maria Alexandrovna! You must be aware of that fact!”
“My dear friend,” replied Maria Alexandrovna—“you will allow me to continue to call you by that name, for you have no better friend than I am!—my friend, you are suffering—you are amazed and bewildered; your heart is sore, and therefore the tone of your remarks to me is perhaps not surprising. But I have made up my mind to open my heart to you, especially as I am, perhaps, in some degree to blame before you. Sit down; let us talk it over!”
Maria Alexandrovna's voice was tender to a sickly extent. Her face showed the pain she was suffering. The amazed Mosgliakoff sat down beside her in the arm-chair.
“You hid somewhere, and listened, I suppose?” she began, looking reproachfully into his face.
“Yes I did, of course I did; and a good thing too! What a fool I should have looked if I hadn't! At all events now I know what you have been plotting against me!” replied the injured man, rudely; encouraging and supporting himself by his own fury.