"Nicholas Yermolaïyevitch! Be kind! Call me a blackguard, a ne'er-do-weel, if I am mistaken about this woman. You see what an affair it is. What a case it is. A romance! A woman murdering her own husband for love! The fame of it will go all over Russia. They will make you investigator in all important cases. Understand, O foolish old man!"
The magistrate frowned, and undecidedly stretched his hand toward his cap.
"Oh, the devil take you!" he said. "Let us go!"
It was dark when the magistrate's carriage rolled up to the porch of the old country house in which Olga Petrovna had taken refuge with her brother.
"What pigs we are," said Chubikoff, taking hold of the bell, "to disturb a poor woman like this!"
"It's all right! It's all right! Don't get frightened! We can say that we have broken a spring."
Chubikoff and Dukovski were met at the threshold by a tall buxom woman of three and twenty, with pitch-black brows and juicy red lips. It was Olga Petrovna herself, apparently not the least distressed by the recent tragedy.
"Oh, what a pleasant surprise!" she said, smiling broadly. "You are just in time for supper. Kuzma Petrovitch is not at home. He is visiting the priest, and has stayed late. But we'll get on without him! Be seated. You have come from the examination?"
"Yes. We broke a spring, you know," began Chubikoff, entering the sitting room and sinking into an armchair.
"Take her unawares—at once!" whispered Dukovski; "take her unawares!"