smile. 'However,' he added, after a moment's thought, 'here, your Excellency,' he began again aloud, 'before you is one Mr. Paklin. He is, to the best of my belief, a resident in Petersburg, and an intimate friend of a certain person who filled the position of tutor in my family, and left my house, taking with him—I blush to add—a young girl, a relative of my own.'
'Ah! oui, oui,' muttered the governor, and he flung up his head; 'I had heard something . . . the Countess was telling me. . .'
Sipyagin raised his voice.
'That person is a certain Mr. Nezhdanov, strongly suspected by me of perverted ideas and theories . . .'
'Un rouge à tous crins,' put in Kallomyetsev.
'Of perverted ideas and theories,' repeated Sipyagin still more distinctly, 'and is certainly not without a share in all this propaganda; he is . . . in hiding, as I have been informed by Mr. Paklin, in the factory of the merchant Faleyev . . .'
At the words 'I have been informed,' Markelov glanced a second time at Paklin, but only smiled, slowly and indifferently.
'Excuse me, excuse me, your Excellency,' cried Paklin, 'and you, Mr. Sipyagin; I never . . . never.. . .'
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