"Now do you suppose he wanted to deceive your mother, or were they both in a conspiracy against you?"
Viérotchka began to aver with much warmth that her mother was not such a bad woman as to be in a conspiracy.
"It won't take me long to find out," said Julie. "You stay here; you are not needed there." Julie returned to the parlor.
"Serge, he has invited this woman and her daughter to take a ride this evening. Tell her about last night's supper."
"Your daughter is agreeable to my wife; now it is necessary to see about her terms; in all probability we shall not have any trouble on that score. But allow me to finish our talk about our mutual friend. You give him very high praise, but are you aware of the way that he talks about his relationship to your family? For example, do you know why he invited us last evening to your box?"
In Marya Alekséyevna's eyes there gleamed, instead of a look of anxious inquiry, the thought, "Then it is so!"
"I am not a gossip," she replied with dissatisfaction. "I myself do not carry tattle around, and I don't listen much to the tattle of others." This was said not without sarcasm, in spite of all her admiration of her visitor. "There are always a good many little things that young people talk about among themselves; there is no need of bothering with them."
"Very good; well then, do you call this also gossip?" He began to tell the story of the supper. Marya Alekséyevna did not let him finish; as soon as he said the first word about the wager, she leaped to her feet and cried out in wrath, entirely forgetting the importance of her guests:—
"Now what sort of tricks are these! Akh! the villain! Akh! the murderer! Now I see why he invited us to go a-driving! He wanted to get me out of the way so as to ruin a defenceless young girl! Akh! the beastly man!" and so she went on. Then she began to thank her guests for salvation of her life and her daughter's honor. "And so that was what you were driving at, bátiushka; I suspicioned it at the very first, that you did not come without some good reason; lessons is lessons, but I saw that you had some other game; but I did not think that was the reason; I thought that you had some other bride for him, that you wanted to take him away from us; I have been unjust to you, poor sinner that I am; be generous and forgive me!
