"Oh, come now!
He himself barely understood what he was saying, and maybe they didn't tell me all of it."
Ganya clutched his head and ran to the window; Varya sat down by the other window.
"Aglaya's funny," she suddenly observed, "she stops me and says: 'Convey my particular personal respects to your parents; one of these days I shall probably find an occasion to see your father.'
And she says it so seriously.
It's terribly odd . . ."
"Not mockingly?
Not mockingly?"
"Precisely not; that's the odd thing."
"Does she know about the old man or doesn't she, what do you think?"
"It's not known to them in the house, I have no doubt of that; but you've given me an idea: maybe Aglaya does know.
She alone knows, because the sisters were also surprised that she sent her greetings to father so seriously.
Why on earth precisely to him?
If she knows, then it's the prince who told her!"
"It takes no cleverness to find out who told her!
A thief!
Just what we needed.
A thief in our family, 'the head of the family'!"
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Varya, becoming quite angry. "A drunken incident, nothing more.
And who came up with it?
Lebedev, the prince . . . fine ones they are; palatial minds.
I don't care a whit about it."
"The old man's a thief and a drunkard," Ganya went on biliously, "I'm a pauper, my sister's husband is a usurer—Aglaya had something to covet!
Pretty, I must say!"
"That sister's husband, the usurer, is your ..."
"Feeder, is that it?
Kindly don't mince words."
"Why are you angry?" Varya recollected herself.
"You don't understand anything, just like a schoolboy.
Do you think all that could harm you in Aglaya's eyes?
You don't know her character; she'd turn her back on the foremost suitor, but she'd be pleased to run to some student in a garret and starve to death—that's her dream!
You've never been able to understand how interesting you'd become in her eyes if you could endure our circumstances with firmness and pride.
The prince caught her on his hook, first of all, because he never tried to catch her and, second, because in everybody's eyes he's an idiot.
This one thing alone, that she'll muddle up the whole family because of him—that's what she likes now.
Ah, none of you understands anything!"
"Well, we've yet to see whether we understand or not," Ganya muttered mysteriously, "only all the same I wouldn't want her to find out about the old man.
I thought the prince would keep it to himself and not tell.
He kept Lebedev from telling, and he didn't want to tell me everything either, when I badgered him . . ."
"So you can see for yourself that everything's known already even without him.
But what is it to you now?
What is there to hope for?
And if there were any hope left, it would only give you a look of suffering in her eyes."
"Well, in the face of a scandal even she would turn coward, despite all her love of novels.
Everything up to a certain limit, and everybody up to a certain limit—you're all the same."
"Aglaya would turn coward?" Varya flared up, looking contemptuously at her brother. "You really have a mean little soul, though!
None of you is worth anything.
She may be funny and eccentric, but she's a thousand times nobler than any of us."
"Well, never mind, never mind, don't be angry," Ganya again muttered smugly.
"I'm only sorry for mother," Varya went on. "I'm afraid this story with father may get to her, oh, I'm afraid!"
"And it surely has," Ganya observed.