rather, the rumor somehow reached Nastasya Filippovna, that in Petersburg, Afanasy Ivanovich was about to marry a beauty, a rich girl, from the nobility—in short, to make a respectable and brilliant match. Later it turned out that the rumor was not accurate in all details: the wedding was then only a project, and everything was still very uncertain, but all the same an extraordinary upheaval took place in Nastasya Filippovna's life after that. She suddenly showed an extraordinary resolve and revealed a most unexpected character. Without further thought, she left her little country house and suddenly went to Petersburg, straight to Totsky, all on her own. He was amazed, tried to begin speaking; but it suddenly turned out, almost from the first phrase, that he had to change completely the style, the vocal range, the former topics of pleasant and elegant conversation, which till then had been used so successfully, the logic—everything, everything! Before him sat a totally different woman, not at all like the one he had known till then and had left only that July in the village of Delight.
This new woman, it turned out, first of all knew and understood an extraordinary amount—so much that it was a cause of profound wonder where she could have acquired such information, could have developed such precise notions in herself. (Could it have been from her girls' library?) What's more, she even understood an exceeding amount about legal matters and had a positive knowledge, if not of the world, then at least of how certain things went in the world; second of all, this was a completely different character from before, that is, not something timid, uncertain in a boarding-school way, sometimes charming in its original liveliness and naivety, sometimes melancholy and pensive, astonished, mistrustful, weepy, and restless.
No: here before him an extraordinary and unexpected being laughed and stung him with a most poisonous sarcasm, telling him outright that she had never felt anything in her heart for him except the deepest contempt, contempt to the point of nausea, which had followed directly upon her initial astonishment. This new woman announced to him that in the fullest sense it would make no difference to her if he married any woman he liked right then and there, but that she had come to prevent this marriage of his, and to prevent it out of spite, solely because she wanted it that way, and consequently it must be that way—"well, so that now I can simply laugh at you to my heart's content, because now I, too, finally feel like laughing."
At least that was how she put it, though she may not have said everything she had in mind. But while the new Nastasya Filippovna was laughing and explaining all this, Afanasy Ivanovich was thinking the matter over to himself and, as far as possible, putting his somewhat shattered thoughts in order. This thinking went on for some time; for almost two weeks he grappled with it and tried to reach a final decision; but after two weeks his decision was taken. The thing was that Afanasy Ivanovich was about fifty at that time, and he was in the highest degree a respectable and settled man. His position in the world and in society had long been established on a most solid foundation. He loved and valued himself, his peace, and his comfort more than anything in the world, as befitted a man decent in the highest degree. Not the slightest disturbance, not the slightest wavering, could be tolerated in what had been established by his entire life and had acquired such a beautiful form. On the other hand, his experience and profound insight into things told Totsky very quickly and with extraordinary sureness that he now had to do with a being who was completely out of the ordinary, that this was precisely the sort of being who would not merely threaten, but would certainly act, and above all would decidedly stop at nothing, the more so as she valued decidedly nothing in the world, so that it was even impossible to tempt her. Here, obviously, was something else, implying some heartful and soulful swill—like some sort of romantic indignation, God knows against whom or why, some insatiable feeling of contempt that leaps completely beyond measure—in short, something highly ridiculous and inadmissible in decent society, something that was a sheer punishment from God for any decent man to encounter. To be sure, with Totsky's wealth and connections, it was possible to produce some small and totally innocent villainy at once, so as to be rid of this trouble. On the other hand, it was obvious that Nastasya Filippovna herself was scarcely capable of doing any harm, for instance, in the legal sense; she could not even cause a significant scandal, because it would always be too easy to limit her. But all that was so only in case Nastasya Filippovna decided to act as everyone generally acts in such cases, without leaping too eccentrically beyond measure. But it was here that Totsky's keen eye also proved useful: he was able to perceive that Nastasya Filippovna herself understood perfectly well how harmless she was in the legal sense, but that she had something quite different in mind and ... in her flashing eyes. Valuing nothing, and least of all herself (it took great intelligence
and perception to guess at that moment that she had long ceased to value herself and, skeptic and society cynic that he was, to believe in the seriousness of that feeling), Nastasya Filippovna was capable of ruining herself, irrevocably and outrageously, facing Siberia and hard labor, if only she could wreak havoc on the man for whom she felt such inhuman loathing. Afanasy Ivanovich had never concealed the fact that he was somewhat cowardly or, better to say, conservative in the highest degree. If he knew, for instance, that he would be killed at the foot of the altar, or that something of that sort would happen, extremely improper, ridiculous, and socially unacceptable, he would of course be frightened, but not so much at being killed or gravely wounded, or having his face publicly spat in, and so on and so forth, as at it happening to him in such an unnatural and unacceptable form. And this was precisely what Nastasya Filippovna foretold, though so far she had been silent about it; he knew that she understood and had studied him to the highest degree, and therefore knew how to strike at him. And since the wedding was indeed only an intention, Afanasy Ivanovich humbled himself and yielded to Nastasya Filippovna.
Another circumstance contributed to this decision: it was difficult to imagine how little this new Nastasya Filippovna resembled the former one in looks. Formerly she had been merely a very pretty girl, but now . . . For a long time Totsky could not forgive himself that he had looked for four years and not seen. True, it means much when an upheaval occurs on both sides, inwardly and unexpectedly. However, he recalled moments, even before, when strange thoughts had come to him, for instance, while looking into those eyes: it was as if he had sensed some deep and mysterious darkness in them. Those eyes had gazed at him—and seemed to pose a riddle. During the last two years he had often been surprised by the change in Nastasya Filippovna's color; she was growing terribly pale and— strangely—was even becoming prettier because of it. Totsky, who, like all gentlemen who have had a bit of fun in their time, at first looked with scorn on this untried soul he had obtained for himself so cheaply, more recently had begun to doubt his view. In any case, he had already resolved that past spring to arrange a marriage for Nastasya Filippovna before too long, in an excellent and well-provided way, with some sensible and respectable gentleman serving in a different province. (Oh, how terribly and wickedly Nastasya Filippovna laughed at that now!) But now Afanasy Ivanovich, charmed by the novelty, even thought he might again make use of