even could hear it all! Now he's just tearing and raving round; he
all but gave me a thrashing, he's bringing a father's curse on the
scene now, as cross as a bear with a sore head; but that's of no
importance. Anna Vassilyevna's crushed, but she's much more
brokenhearted at her daughter leaving her than at her marriage.'

Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers.

'A mother,' he commented, 'to be sure.'

'Your nephew,' resumed Shubin, 'threatens to lodge a complaint with
the Metropolitan and the General-Governor and the Minister, but it
will end by her going. A happy thought to ruin his own daughter! He'll
crow a little and then lower his colours.'

'They'd no right,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch, and he drank out of the
jug.

'To be sure. But what a storm of criticism, gossip, and comments will
be raised in Moscow! She's not afraid of them. . . . Besides she's
above them. She's going away . . . and it's awful to think where she's
going--to such a distance, such a wilderness! What future awaits her
there? I seem to see her setting off from a posting station in a
snow-storm with thirty degrees of frost. She's leaving her country,
and her people; but I understand her doing it. Whom is she leaving
here behind her? What people has she seen? Kurnatovsky and Bersenyev
and our humble selves; and these are the best she's seen. What is
there to regret about it? One thing's bad; I'm told her husband--the
devil, how that word sticks in my throat!--Insarov, I'm told, is
spitting blood; that's a bad lookout. I saw him the other day: his