?" asked Otsov,
glancing in embarrassment at the Englishwoman. "Using such language
before a lady and she . . . ."

"Oh, confound her, it doesn't matter, she doesn't understand a
syllable of Russian, whether you praise her or blame her, it is all
the same to her! Just look at her nose! Her nose alone is enough
to make one faint. We sit here for whole days together and not a
single word! She stands like a stuffed image and rolls the whites
of her eyes at the water."

The Englishwoman gave a yawn, put a new worm on, and dropped the
hook into the water.

"I wonder at her not a little," Gryabov went on, "the great stupid
has been living in Russia for ten years and not a word of Russian!
. . . Any little aristocrat among us goes to them and learns to
babble away in their lingo, while they . . . there's no making them
out. Just look at her nose, do look at her nose!"

"Come, drop it . . . it's uncomfortable. Why attack a woman?"

"She's not a woman, but a maiden lady. . . . I bet she's dreaming
of suitors. The ugly doll. And she smells of something decaying
. . . . I've got a loathing for her, my boy! I can't look at her with
indifference. When she turns her ugly eyes on me it sends a twinge
all through me as though I had knocked my elbow on the parapet. She
likes fishing too. Watch her: she fishes as though it were a holy
rite! She looks upon everything with disdain . . . . She stands
there, the wretch, and is conscious that she is a human being, and
that therefore she is the monarch of nature. And do you know what
her name is? Wilka Charlesovna Fyce! Tfoo! There is no getting it
out!"

The Englishwoman, hearing her name, deliberately turned her nose
in Gryabov's direction and scanned him with a disdainful glance;
she raised her eyes from Gryabov to Otsov and steeped him in disdain.
And all this in silence, with dignity and deliberation.

"Did you see?" said Gryabov chuckling. "As though to say 'take
that.' Ah, you monster! It's only for the children's sake that I
keep that triton. If it weren't for the children, I wouldn't let
her come within ten miles of my estate. . . . She has got a nose
like a hawk's . . . and her figure! That doll makes me think of a
long nail, so I could take her, and knock her into the ground, you
know. Stay, I believe I have got a bite. . . ."

Gryabov jumped up and raised his rod. The line drew taut. . . .
Gryabov tugged again, but could not pull out the hook.

"It has caught," he said