here is anything mysterious coming--or
in a word--"

"Better read on without any more beating about the bush," said Gania.

"Affectation!" remarked someone else.

"Too much talk," said Rogojin, breaking the silence for the first time.

Hippolyte glanced at him suddenly, and when their eye, met Rogojin
showed his teeth in a disagreeable smile, and said the following strange
words: "That's not the way to settle this business, my friend; that's
not the way at all."

Of course nobody knew what Rogojin meant by this; but his words made
a deep impression upon all. Everyone seemed to see in a flash the same
idea.

As for Hippolyte, their effect upon him was astounding. He trembled so
that the prince was obliged to support him, and would certainly have
cried out, but that his voice seemed to have entirely left him for the
moment. For a minute or two he could not speak at all, but panted and
stared at Rogojin. At last he managed to ejaculate:

"Then it was YOU who came--YOU--YOU?"

"Came where? What do you mean?" asked Rogojin, amazed. But Hippolyte,
panting and choking with excitement, interrupted him violently.

"YOU came to me last week, in the night, at two o'clock, the day I was
with you in the morning! Confess it was you!"

"Last week? In the night? Have you gone cracked, my good friend?"

Hippolyte paused and considered a moment. Then a smile of
cunning--almost triumph--crossed his lips.

"It was you," he murmured, almost in a whisper, but with absolute
conviction. "Yes, it was you who came to my room and sat silently on a
chair at my window for a whole hour--more! It was between one and two
at night; you rose and went out at about three. It was you, you! Why you
should have frightened me so, why you should have wished to torment me
like that, I cannot tell--but you it was."

There was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but his look of
fear and his trembling had not left him.

"You shall hear all this directly, gentlemen. I-I--listen!"

He seized his paper in a desperate hurry; he fidgeted with it, and tried
to sort it, but for a long while his trembling hands could not collect
the sheets together. "He's either mad or delirious," murmured Rogojin.
At last he began.

For the first five minutes the reader's voice continued to tremble,
and he read disconnectedly and unevenly; but gradually his voice
strengthened. Occasionally a violent fit of coughing stopped him, but
his animation grew with the