Though it might have been foreseen from Marynia's letter that affairs would take this and no other turn, and the young man was bound to be prepared for it, the news produced the impression of a thunder-clap. It seemed to him that a misfortune had happened, as sudden as it was incurable,--a misfortune for which the whole responsibility fell on him. Pani Emilia, knowing better than any one else Marynia's attachment to Kremen, had also a presentiment which she could not conceal, that by this sale the difficulty of bringing these two young people nearer each other would be increased greatly. "If Mashko does not marry Marynia," said Pan Stanislav, "he will strip old Plavitski in such fashion as to save himself and leave the old man without a copper. If I had sold my claim to the first usurer I met, Plavitski would have wriggled out, paid something, promised more; and the ruin of Kremen would have been deferred for whole years, in the course of which something favorable might have happened; in every case there would have been time to sell Kremen on satisfactory conditions. Now, if they are left without a copper, the fault will be mine." But Pani Emilia looked on the affair from another side: "The evil is not in this alone," said she, "that Kremen is sold. You have caused this sale, and that immediately after seeing Marynia. If some one else had done so, the affair would not have such a significance; but the worst is just this, that Marynia was greatly confident that you would not act thus."