augh at me. She thinks no more
of marrying me than if she were changing her shoe. Would you believe it,
I haven't seen her for five days, and I daren't go near her. She asks me
what I come for, as if she were not content with having disgraced me--"

"Disgraced you! How?"

"Just as though you didn't know! Why, she ran away from me, and went to
you. You admitted it yourself, just now."

"But surely you do not believe that she..."

"That she did not disgrace me at Moscow with that officer. Zemtuznikoff?
I know for certain she did, after having fixed our marriage-day
herself!"

"Impossible!" cried the prince.

"I know it for a fact," replied Rogojin, with conviction.

"It is not like her, you say? My friend, that's absurd. Perhaps such an
act would horrify her, if she were with you, but it is quite different
where I am concerned. She looks on me as vermin. Her affair with Keller
was simply to make a laughing-stock of me. You don't know what a fool
she made of me in Moscow; and the money I spent over her! The money! the
money!"

"And you can marry her now, Parfen! What will come of it all?" said the
prince, with dread in his voice.

Rogojin gazed back gloomily, and with a terrible expression in his eyes,
but said nothing.

"I haven't been to see her for five days," he repeated, after a slight
pause. "I'm afraid of being turned out. She says she's still her own
mistress, and may turn me off altogether, and go abroad. She told me
this herself," he said, with a peculiar glance at Muishkin. "I think she
often does it merely to frighten me. She is always laughing at me, for
some reason or other; but at other times she's angry, and won't say a
word, and that's what I'm afraid of. I took her a shawl one day, the
like of which she might never have seen, although she did live in luxury
and she gave it away to her maid, Katia. Sometimes when I can keep away
no longer, I steal past the house on the sly, and once I watched at the
gate till dawn--I thought something was going on--and she saw me from
the window. She asked me what I should do if I found she had deceived
me. I said, 'You know well enough.'"

"What did she know?" cried the prince.

"How was I to tell?" replied Rogojin, with an angry laugh. "I did my
best to catch her tripping in Moscow, but did not succeed. However, I
caught hold of her one day, and said: 'You are engaged to be married
into a respectable family, and do you know what sort of a woman you are?
T