Malania Pavlovna adored her husband, and had been all her life an exemplarily faithful wife; but there had been a romance even in her life--a young cousin, an hussar, killed, as she supposed, in a duel on her account; but, according to more trustworthy reports, killed by a blow on the head from a billiard-cue in a tavern brawl. A water-colour portrait of this object of her affections was kept by her in a secret drawer. Malania Pavlovna always blushed up to her ears when she mentioned Kapiton--such was the name of the young hero--and Alexey Sergeitch would designedly scowl, shake his finger at his wife again, and say: ‘No trusting a horse in the field nor a woman in the house. Don’t talk to me of Kapiton, he’s Cupidon!’ Then Malania Pavlovna would be all of a flutter and say: ‘Alexis, Alexis, it’s too bad of you! In your young days you flirted, I’ve no doubt, with all sorts of misses and madams--and so now you imagine....’ ‘Come, that’s enough, that’s enough, my dear Malania,’ Alexey Sergeitch interrupted with a smile. ‘Your gown is white--but whiter still your soul!’ ‘Yes, Alexis, it is whiter!’ ‘Ah, what a tongue, what a tongue!’ Alexis would repeat, patting her hand. To speak of ‘views’ in the case of Malania Pavlovna would be even more inappropriate than in the case of Alexey Sergeitch; yet I once chanced to witness a strange manifestation of my aunt’s secret feelings. In the course of conversation I once somehow mentioned the famous chief of police, Sheshkovsky; Malania Pavlovna turned suddenly livid--positively livid, green, in spite of her rouge and paint--and in a thick and perfectly unaffected voice (a very rare thing with her--she usually minced a little, intoned, and lisped) she said: ‘Oh, what a name to utter! And towards nightfall, too! Don’t utter that name!’ I was astonished; what kind of significance could his name have for such a harmless and inoffensive creature, incapable--not merely of doing--even of thinking of anything not permissible? Anything but cheerful reflections were aroused in me by this terror, manifesting itself after almost half a century.