Page 466 - the-brothers-karamazov

Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after an-
other to put up with that day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked
the dinner, and the soup, compared with Smerdyakov’s,
was ‘no better than dish-water,’ and the fowl was so dried
up that it was impossible to masticate it. To her master’s
bitter, though deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna re-
plied that the fowl was a very old one to begin with, and
that she had never been trained as a cook. In the evening
there was another trouble in store for Fyodor Pavlovitch;
he was informed that Grigory, who had not been well for
the last three days, was completely laid up by his lumba-
go. Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea as early as possible
and locked himself up alone in the house. He was in ter-
rible excitement and suspense. That evening he reckoned on
Grushenka’s coming almost as a certainty. He had received
from Smerdyakov that morning an assurance ‘that she had
promised to come without fail.’ The incorrigible old man’s
heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and down his
empty rooms listening. He had to be on the alert. Dmitri
might be on the watch for her somewhere, and when she
knocked on the window (Smerdyakov had informed him
two days before that he had told her where and how to
knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be
a second in the passage, for fear which God forbid! — that
she should be frightened and run away. Fyodor Pavlovitch
had much to think of, but never had his heart been steeped
in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could say almost
certainly that she would come!