Page 478 - the-idiot

be the slightest hitch in the simplest matters of everyday life,
but she immediately foresaw the most dreadful and alarm-
ing consequences, and suffered accordingly.
What then must have been her condition, when, among
all the imaginary anxieties and calamities which so con-
stantly beset her, she now saw looming ahead a serious
cause for annoyance— something really likely to arouse
doubts and suspicions!
‘How dared they, how DARED they write that hateful
anonymous letter informing me that Aglaya is in com-
munication with Nastasia Philipovna?’ she thought, as she
dragged the prince along towards her own house, and again
when she sat him down at the round table where the family
was already assembled. ‘How dared they so much as THINK
of such a thing? I should DIE with shame if I thought there
was a particle of truth in it, or if I were to show the let-
ter to Aglaya herself! Who dares play these jokes upon US,
the Epanchins? WHY didn’t we go to the Yelagin instead
of coming down here? I TOLD you we had better go to the
Yelagin this summer, Ivan Fedorovitch. It’s all your fault. I
dare say it was that Varia who sent the letter. It’s all Ivan Fe-
dorovitch. THAT woman is doing it all for him, I know she
is, to show she can make a fool of him now just as she did
when he used to give her pearls.
‘But after all is said, we are mixed up in it. Your daugh-
ters are mixed up in it, Ivan Fedorovitch; young ladies in
society, young ladies at an age to be married; they were
present, they heard everything there was to hear. They were
mixed up with that other scene, too, with those dreadful