ten years old, and fancy, he learns faster than any of them!'
In suddenly changing the subject of conversation, Marianna herself seemed transformed. She grew rather pale and quiet . . . and her face expressed confusion, as though she began to be ashamed of all she had been saying. She apparently wanted to get Nezhdanov upon a question of some sort─the schools or the peasantry─anything, if only they might not continue in the same tone as before. But at that minute he was in no humour for 'questions.'
'Marianna Vikentyevna,' he began, 'I will speak to you openly. I did not at all anticipate all that . . . has just passed between us', (At the word 'passed' she started a little.) 'I think we have suddenly become very . . . very intimate. And it was bound to be so. We have long been getting closer to one another, but we did not put it into words. And so I, too, will speak to you without reserve. You are wretched and miserable in this house, but your uncle, though he's limited, still, so far as I can judge, he's a humane man, isn't he? Won't he understand your position and stand by you?'
'My uncle? To begin with, he's not a man at all: he's an official─a senator or a minister . . . I don't know. And secondly . . . I
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