“A brooch has been stolen, I tell you. The mistress has been rummaging in everything with her own hands. She even searched Mihailo, the porter, herself. It’s a perfect disgrace! Nikolay Sergeitch simply looks on and cackles like a hen. But you’ve no need to tremble like that, miss. They found nothing here. You’ve nothing to be afraid of it you didn’t take the brooch.”

“But, Liza, it’s vile… it’s insulting,” said Mashenka, breathless with indignation. “It’s so mean. so low! What right had she to suspect me and to rummage in my things?”

“You are living with strangers, miss,” sighed Liza. “Though you are a young lady, still you are… as it were… a servant.… It’s not like living with your papa and mamma.”

Mashenka threw herself on the bed and sobbed bitterly. Never in her life had she been subjected to such an outrage, never had she been so deeply insulted.… She, well-educated, refined, the daughter of a teacher, was suspected of theft; she had been searched like a streetwalker! She could not imagine a greater insult. And to this feeling of resentment was added an oppressive dread of what would come next. All sorts of absurd ideas came into her mind. If they could suspect her of theft, then they might arrest her, strip her naked, and search her, then lead her through the street with an escort of soldiers, cast her into a cold, dark cell with mice and woodlice, exactly like the dungeon in which Princess Tarakanov was imprisoned. Who would stand up for her? Her parents lived far away in the provinces; they had not the money to come to her. In the capital she was as solitary as in a desert, without friends or kindred. They could do what they liked with her.

“I will go to all the courts and all the lawyers,” Mashenka thought, trembling. “I will explain to them, I will take an oath.… They will believe that I could not be a thief!”

Mashenka remembered that under the sheets in her basket she had some sweetmeats, which, following the habits of her schooldays, she had put in her pocket at dinner and carried off to her room. She felt hot all over, and was ashamed at the thought that her little secret was known to the lady of the house; and all this terror, shame, resentment, brought on an attack of palpitation of the heart, which set up a throbbing in her temples, in her heart, and deep down in her stomach.

“Dinner is ready,” the servant summoned Mashenka.

“Shall I go, or not?”

Mashenka brushed her hair, wiped her face with a wet towel, and went into the dining-room. There they had already begun dinner. At one end of the table sat Fedosya Vassilyevna with a stupid, solemn, serious face; at the other end Nikolay Sergeitch. At the sides there were the visitors and the children. The dishes were handed by two footmen in swallowtails and white gloves. Every one knew that there was an upset in the house, that Madame Kushkin was in trouble, and every one was silent. Nothing was heard but the sound of munching and the rattle of spoons on the plates.

The lady of the house, herself, was the first to speak.

“What is the third course?” she asked the footman in a weary, injured voice.

“Esturgeon à la russe,” answered the footman.

“I ordered that, Fenya,” Nikolay Sergeitch hastened to observe. “I wanted some fish. If you don’t like it, ma chère, don’t let them serve it. I just ordered it.…”

Fedosya Vassilyevna did not like dishes that she had not ordered herself, and now her eyes filled with tears.