“Come, don’t let us agitate ourselves,” Mamikov her household doctor, observed in a honeyed voice, just touching her arm, with a smile as honeyed. “We are nervous enough as it is. Let us forget the brooch! Health is worth more than two thousand roubles!”

“It’s not the two thousand I regret,” answered the lady, and a big tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s the fact itself that revolts me! I cannot put up with thieves in my house. I don’t regret it—I regret nothing; but to steal from me is such ingratitude! That’s how they repay me for my kindness.…”

They all looked into their plates, but Mashenka fancied after the lady’s words that every one was looking at her. A lump rose in her throat; she began crying and put her handkerchief to her lips.

“Pardon,” she muttered. “I can’t help it. My head aches. I’ll go away.”

And she got up from the table, scraping her chair awkwardly, and went out quickly, still more overcome with confusion.

“It’s beyond everything!” said Nikolay Sergeitch, frowning. “What need was there to search her room? How out of place it was!”

“I don’t say she took the brooch,” said Fedosya Vassilyevna, “but can you answer for her? To tell the truth, I haven’t much confidence in these learned paupers.”

“It really was unsuitable, Fenya.… Excuse me, Fenya, but you’ve no kind of legal right to make a search.”

“I know nothing about your laws. All I know is that I’ve lost my brooch. And I will find the brooch!” She brought her fork down on the plate with a clatter, and her eyes flashed angrily. “And you eat you dinner, and don’t interfere in what doesn’t concern you!”

Nikolay Sergeitch dropped his eyes mildly and sighed. Meanwhile Mashenka, reaching her room, flung herself on her bed. She felt now neither alarm nor shame, but she felt an intense longing to go and slap the cheeks of this hard, arrogant, dull-witted, prosperous woman.

Lying on her bed she breathed into her pillow and dreamed of how nice it would be to go and buy the most expensive brooch and fling it into the face of this bullying woman. If only it were God’s will that Fedosya Vassilyevna should come to ruin and wander about begging, and should taste all the horrors of poverty and dependence, and that Mashenka, whom she had insulted, might give her alms! Oh, if only she could come in for a big fortune, could buy a carriage, and could drive noisily past the windows so as to be envied by that woman!

But all these were only dreams, in reality there was only one thing left to do—to get away as quickly as possible, not to stay another hour in this place, It was true it was terrible to lose her place, to go back to her parents, who had nothing; but what could she do? Mashenka could not bear the sight of the lady of the house nor of her little room; she felt stifled and wretched here. She was so disgusted with Fedosya Vassilyevna who was so obsessed by her illnesses and her supposed aristocratic rank, that everything in the world seemed to have become coarse and unattractive because this woman was living in it. Mashenka jumped up from the bed and began packing.

“May I come in?” asked Nikolay Sergeitch at the door; he had come up noiselessly to the door, and spoke in a soft, subdued voice. “May I?”

“Come in.”

He came in and stood still near the door. His eyes looked dim and his red little nose was shiny. After dinner he used to drink bear, and the fact was perceptible in his walk, in his feeble, flabby hands.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the basket.