Page 765 - the-idiot

‘I told you I had not had much of an education,’ replied
the prince.
‘How am I to respect you, if that’s the case? Read on now.
No— don’t! Stop reading!’
And once more, that same evening, Aglaya mystified
them all. Prince S. had returned, and Aglaya was particu-
larly amiable to him, and asked a great deal after Evgenie
Pavlovitch. (Muishkin had not come in as yet.)
Suddenly Prince S. hinted something about ‘a new and
approaching change in the family.’ He was led to this re-
mark by a communication inadvertently made to him by
Lizabetha Prokofievna, that Adelaida’s marriage must be
postponed a little longer, in order that the two weddings
might come off together.
It is impossible to describe Aglaya’s irritation. She flared
up, and said some indignant words about ‘all these silly in-
sinuations.’ She added that ‘she had no intentions as yet of
replacing anybody’s mistress.’
These words painfully impressed the whole party; but
especially her parents. Lizabetha Prokofievna summoned a
secret council of two, and insisted upon the general’s de-
manding from the prince a full explanation of his relations
with Nastasia Philipovna. The general argued that it was
only a whim of Aglaya’s; and that, had not Prince S. unfor-
tunately made that remark, which had confused the child
and made her blush, she never would have said what she
did; and that he was sure Aglaya knew well that anything
she might have heard of the prince and Nastasia Philipovna
was merely the fabrication of malicious tongues, and that

The Idiot