Page 1288 - the-brothers-karamazov

but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him.
Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dress-
ing gown, rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar
and water, on his head. He looked at Alyosha as he came
in with an undefined expression, but there was a shade of
something like dread discernible in it. He had become ter-
ribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be
silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering
something heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything
about him. If he roused himself from his brooding and be-
gan to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness and
never of what he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes
with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more
at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he
scarcely spoke to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his
whole face lighted up with joy.
Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This
time Mitya was waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did
not dare ask him a question. He felt it almost unthinkable
that Katya would consent to come, and at the same time
he felt that if she did not come, something inconceivable
would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.
‘Trifon Borissovitch,’ Mitya began nervously, ‘has pulled
his whole inn to pieces, I am told. He’s taken up the flooring,
pulled apart the planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He
is seeking treasure all the time — the fifteen hundred rou-
bles which the prosecutor said I’d hidden there. He began
playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he got home. Serve
him right, the swindler! The guard here told me yesterday;

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