ether for a few seconds, as
though she did not know where she was, and what she was doing,
and getting up rapidly, she moved towards the door.

"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change of
her face at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me?"

"Dolly, one word more," he said, following her.

"If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children!
They may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once,
and you may live here with your mistress!"

And she went out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued
tread walked out of the room. "Matvey says she will come round;
but how? I don't see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how
horrible it is! And how vulgarly she shouted," he said to
himself, remembering her shriek and the words--"scoundrel" and
"mistress." "And very likely the maids were listening! Horribly
vulgar! horrible!" Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds
alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the
room.

It was Friday, and in the dining room the German watchmaker was
winding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke
about this punctual, bald watchmaker, "that the German was wound
up for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches," and he
smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: "And maybe she
will come round! That's a good expression, '_come round,_'" he
thought. "I must repeat that."

"Matvey!" he shouted. "Arrange everything with Darya in the
sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna," he said to Matvey when he came
in.

"Yes, sir."

Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the
steps.

"You won't dine at home?" said Matvey, seeing him off.

"That's as it happens. But here's for the housekeeping," he
said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. "That'll be
enough."

"Enough or not enough, we must make it do," said Matvey, slamming
the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.

Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and
knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went
back again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the
household cares which crowded upon her directly she went out from
it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, the
English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in
putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay,
and which only she could