"Oh, dear no! I shall do nothing of the sort, Maria Alexandrovna! I steal your sugar, do I? I tell you you shall not talk of me like that, madam-you dare not! I have long suspected you of spreading this sort of rubbish abroad about me! Sophia Petrovna came and told me all about it. So I stole your sugar, did I, eh?"

"But, my dear la-dies!" said the prince, "it was only part of a dream!

What do my dreams matter?--"

"Great tub of a woman!" muttered Maria Alexandrovna through her teeth.

"What! what! I'm a tub, too, am I?" shrieked Natalia Dimitrievna. "And what are you yourself, pray? Oh, I have long known that you call me a tub, madam. Never mind!-at all events my husband is a man, madam, and not a fool, like yours!"

"Ye-yes-quite so! I remember there _was_ something about a tub, too!"

murmured the old man, with a vague recollection of his late conversation with Maria Alexandrovna.

"What-_you_, too? _you_ join in abusing a respectable woman of n.o.ble extraction, do you? How dare you call me names, prince-you wretched old one-legged misery! I'm a tub am I, you one-legged old abomination?"

"Wha-at, madam, I one-legged?"

"Yes-one-legged and toothless, sir; that's what you are!"

"Yes, and one-eyed too!" shouted Maria Alexandrovna.

"And what's more, you wear stays instead of having your own ribs!" added Natalia Dimitrievna.

"His face is all on wire springs!"

"He hasn't a hair of his own to swear by!"

"Even the old fool's moustache is stuck on!" put in Maria Alexandrovna.

"Well, Ma-arie Alexandrovna, give me the credit of having a nose of my ve-ry own, at all events!" said the prince, overwhelmed with confusion under these unexpected disclosures. "My friend, it must have been you betrayed me! _you_ must have told them that my hair is stuck on?"

"Uncle, what an idea, I--!"

"My dear boy, I can't stay here any lon-ger, take me away somewhere-_quelle societe_! Where have you brought me to, eh?-Gracious Hea-eaven, what dreadful soc-iety!"

"Idiot! scoundrel!" shrieked Maria Alexandrovna.

"Goodness!" said the unfortunate old prince. "I can't quite remember just now what I came here for at all-I suppose I shall reme-mber directly. Take me away, quick, my boy, or I shall be torn to pieces here! Besides, I have an i-dea that I want to make a note of--"

"Come along, uncle-it isn't very late; I'll take you over to an hotel at once, and I'll move over my own things too."

"Ye-yes, of course, a ho-tel! Good-bye, my charming child; you alone, you-are the only vir-tuous one of them all; you are a no-oble child.

Good-bye, my charming girl! Come along, my friend;-oh, good gra-cious, what people!"

I will not attempt to describe the end of this disagreeable scene, after the prince's departure.

The guests separated in a hurricane of scolding and abuse and mutual vituperation, and Maria Alexandrovna was at last left alone amid the ruins and relics of her departed glory.

Alas, alas! Power, glory, weight-all had disappeared in this one unfortunate evening. Maria Alexandrovna quite realised that there was no chance of her ever again mounting to the height from which she had now fallen. Her long preeminence and despotism over society in general had collapsed.

What remained to her? Philosophy? She was wild with the madness of despair all night! Zina was dishonoured-scandals would circulate, never-ceasing scandals; and-oh! it was dreadful!

As a faithful historian, I must record that poor Afana.s.sy was the scapegoat this night; he "caught it" so terribly that he eventually disappeared; he had hidden himself in the garret, and was there starved to death almost, with cold, all night.

The morning came at last; but it brought nothing good with it! Misfortunes never come singly.

CHAPTER XV.

If fate makes up its mind to visit anyone with misfortune, there is no end to its malice! This fact has often been remarked by thinkers; and, as if the ignominy of last night were not enough, the same malicious destiny had prepared for this family more, yea, and worse-evils to come!

By ten o'clock in the morning a strange and almost incredible rumour was in full swing all over the town: it was received by society, of course, with full measure of spiteful joy, just as we all love to receive delightfully scandalous stories of anyone about us.

"To lose one's sense of shame to such an extent!" people said one to another.

"To humiliate oneself so, and to neglect the first rules of propriety! To loose the bands of decency altogether like this, really!" etc., etc.

But here is what had happened.

Early in the morning, something after six o'clock, a poor piteous-looking old woman came hurriedly to the door of Maria Alexandrovna's house, and begged the maid to wake Miss Zina up as quickly, as possible,-_only_ Miss Zina, and very quietly, so that her mother should not hear of it, if possible.

Zina, pale and miserable, ran out to the old woman immediately.

The latter fell at Zina's feet and kissed them and begged her with tears to come with her at once to see poor Vaisia, her son, who had been so bad, _so_ bad all night that she did not think he could live another day.

The old woman told Zina that Vaisia had sent to beg her to come and bid him farewell in this his death hour: he conjured her to come by all the blessed angels, and by all their past-otherwise he must die in despair.

Zina at once decided to go, in spite of the fact that, by so doing, she would be justifying all the scandal and slanders disseminated about her in former days, as to the intercepted letter, her visits to him, and so on.

Without a word to her mother, then, she donned her cloak and started off with the old woman, pa.s.sing through the whole length of the town, into one of the poorest slums of Mordasof-and stopped at a little low wretched house, with small miserable windows, and snow piled round the bas.e.m.e.nt for warmth.

In this house, in a tiny room, more than half of which was occupied by an enormous stove, on a wretched bed, and covered with a miserably thin quilt, lay a young man, pale and haggard: his eyes were ablaze with the fire of fever, his hands were dry and thin, and he was breathing with difficulty and very hoa.r.s.ely. He looked as though he might have been handsome once, but disease had put its finger on his features and made them dreadful to look upon and sad withal, as are so many dying consumptive patients' faces.

His old mother who had fed herself for a year past with the conviction that her son would recover, now saw at last that Vaisia was not to live.

She stood over him, bowed down with her grief-tearless, and looked and looked, and could not look enough; and felt, but could not realize, that this dear son of hers must in a few days be buried in the miserable Mordasof churchyard, far down beneath the snow and frozen earth!

But Vaisia was not looking at her at this moment! His poor suffering face was at rest now, and happy; for he saw before him the dear image which he had thought of, dreamed of, and loved through all the long sad nights of his illness, for the last year and a half! He realised that she forgave him, and had come, like an angel of G.o.d, to tell him of her forgiveness, here, on his deathbed.

She pressed his hands, wept over him, stood and smiled over him, looked at him once more with those wonderful eyes of hers, and all the past, the undying ever-present past rose up before the mind's eye of the dying man.

The spark of life flashed up again in his soul, as though to show, now that it was about to die out for ever on this earth, how hard, how hard it was to see so sweet a light fade away.

"Zina, Zina!" he said, "my Zina, do not weep; don't grieve, Zina, don't remind me that I must die! Let me gaze at you, so-so,-and feel that our two souls have come together once more-that you have forgiven me! Let me kiss your dear hands again, as I used, and so let me die without noticing the approach of death.

"How thin you have grown, Zina! and how sweetly you are looking at me now, my Zina! Do you remember how you used to laugh, in bygone days? Oh, Zina, my angel, I shall not ask you to forgive me,-I will not remember anything about-that, you know what! for if you _do_ forgive me, I can never forgive myself!

"All the long, long nights, Zina, I have lain here and thought, and thought; and I have long since decided that I had better die, Zina; for I am not fit to live!"

Zina wept, and silently pressed his hands, as though she would stop him talking so.