Page 235 - the-idiot

values me at a hundred thousand! I see you are still angry
with me, Gania! Why, surely you never really wished to take
ME into your family? ME, Rogojin’s mistress! What did the
prince say just now?’
‘I never said you were Rogojin’s mistress—you are NOT!’
said the prince, in trembling accents.
‘Nastasia Philipovna, dear soul!’ cried the actress, impa-
tiently, ‘do be calm, dear! If it annoys you so—all this—do
go away and rest! Of course you would never go with this
wretched fellow, in spite of his hundred thousand roubles!
Take his money and kick him out of the house; that’s the
way to treat him and the likes of him! Upon my word, if it
were my business, I’d soon clear them all out!’
The actress was a kind-hearted woman, and highly im-
pressionable. She was very angry now.
‘Don’t be cross, Daria Alexeyevna!’ laughed Nastasia. ‘I
was not angry when I spoke; I wasn’t reproaching Gania. I
don’t know how it was that I ever could have indulged the
whim of entering an honest family like his. I saw his moth-
er—and kissed her hand, too. I came and stirred up all that
fuss, Gania, this afternoon, on purpose to see how much
you could swallow—you surprised me, my friend—you did,
indeed. Surely you could not marry a woman who accepts
pearls like those you knew the general was going to give
me, on the very eve of her marriage? And Rogojin! Why, in
your own house and before your own brother and sister, he
bargained with me! Yet you could come here and expect to
be betrothed to me before you left the house! You almost
brought your sister, too. Surely what Rogojin said about you

The Idiot