“Nothing!” He laughed. “What about my delightful nieces and their home circle? You were always one to shrink from the truth, Ivan Andreievitch. You fancy that you can sink into the bosom of a charming family and escape the disadvantages.... Not at all. There are always disadvantages in a Russian family. I am the disadvantage in this one.” He laughed again, and insisted on taking my arm once more. “If you feel so strongly about me, Durward” (when he used my surname he always accented the second syllable very strongly) “all you have to do is to cut my niece Vera out of your visiting list. That, I imagine, is the last thing that you wish. Well, then—”
“Vera Michailovna is my friend,” I said hotly—it was foolish of me to be so easily provoked, but I could not endure his sneering tone. “If you imply—”
“Nonsense,” he answered sharply, “I imply nothing. Do you suppose that I have been more than a month here without discovering the facts? It’s your English friend Lawrence who is in love with Vera—and Vera with him.”
“That is a lie!” I cried.
He laughed. “You English,” he said, “are not so unobservant as you seem, but you hate facts. Vera and your friend Lawrence have been in love with one another since their first meeting, and my dear nephew-in-law Markovitch knows it.”
“That’s impossible,” I cried. “He—”
“No,” Semyonov replied, “I was wrong. He does not know it—he suspects. And my nephew-in-law in a state of suspicion is a delightful study.”
By now we were in a narrow street, so dark that we stumbled at every step. We seemed to be quite alone.
It was I who now caught his arm. “Semyonov!” I said, and my urgency stopped him so that he stood where he was. “Leave them alone! Leave them alone! They’ve done no harm to you, they can offer you nothing, they are not intelligent enough for you nor amusing enough. Even if it is true what you say it will pass—Lawrence will go away. I will see that he does. Only leave them alone! For God’s sake, let them be!”
His face was very close to mine, and, looking at it in the gathering dark, it was as though it were a face of glass behind which other faces passed and repassed. I cannot hope to give any idea of the strange mingling of regret, malice, pride, pain, scorn, and humour that those eyes showed. His red lips parted as though he would speak, for a moment he turned away from me and looked down the black tunnel of the street, then he walked forward again.