But his words were expressive of alarm for her rather than for himself. Her act had been so unexpected that Yudushka even forgot to pretend to be frightened. Only last night his mother had been affectionate, had jested, and played fool with Yevpraksia. Evidently, then, it had all happened in a moment of sudden anger, and there was nothing premeditated, nothing real about it all. Indeed, he had been very much afraid of his mother's curse but he had pictured it quite differently. In his idle mind he had built an elaborate staging for the occasion, ikons, burning candles, his mother standing in the center of the room, terrible, with a darkened face as she hurled the curse. Then, thunder, candles going out, the veil tearing asunder, darkness covering the earth, and above, amidst the clouds the wrathful countenance of Jehovah illumined by a flash of lightning. But nothing of the sort had happened, so his mother had simply done something rash and silly. And she had had no reason to curse him in earnest, because of late there had been no cause for quarreling. Many changes had occurred since Yudushka expressed his doubt as to whether a certain coach belonged to his mother dear (Yudushka admitted to _himself_ that _then_ he had been wrong and deserved damnation). Arina Petrovna had become more submissive, and Porfiry Vladimirych had but one thought in his head: how to placate his mother dear. "The old woman is doing poorly, my, how poorly! At times she even raves," he consoled himself. "The darling sits down to play fool and before you know it, she dozes off." In justice to Yudushka it must be admitted that his mother's decrepitude gave him some alarm. Even he was not quite ready for her death, had not made any plans, had had no time to make estimates--how much capital mother had when she left Dubrovino, what that capital might bring in annually, how much of the interest she had spent, and how much she had added to the principal. In a word, he had not gone through an infinity of useless trifles, without which he always felt as if he were caught unawares. "The old woman is hale and hearty," he would muse at times. "Still she won't spend it all--impossible. When she shared us out, she had a neat sum. Maybe she transferred some to the orphans. Oh, the old woman is rich. Yes, she is." But these musings were not so very serious, and vanished without leaving an impress on his mind. The mass of daily trivialities was already great, and there was as yet no urgent need to augment them by the addition of new trivialities. Porfiry Vladimirych kept putting the matter off, and did not realize it was time to begin until after the damnation scene.