But a great point was this: The servants and the whole village loved the "young lady." People considered the Krepetskis as intruders, and her as the genuine inheritor. All feared Martsian, except Vilchopolski. But even after the removal of that young noble, the unseen care of the people went, as it were, with Anulka, and Martsian understood that the fear which he roused had its limit, beyond which for him would begin real danger. He understood also that Vilchopolski, whose eyes had a daring expression, would not go far from Belchantska, and that if the young lady should be in need of defence he would not draw back before anything; hence he confessed to himself that she was not really so deserted by every one as at first he had thought, and as on a time he had told his old father. "Who will take her part? No one!" said he, when the old man commanded him to remember the terrible punishments which the laws threatened for an attempt on the honor of a woman. At last he understood that there were such defenders. That raised one more obstacle, but obstacles and perils were only an incitement to a nature like Martsian's. He deceived himself yet, thinking that he would move the young lady and make her love him; but there came moments in which he saw, as clearly as a thing on the palm, that he was quite powerless; and then he raged, as said the comrades of his revels, and had it not been for a certain dull, but strong and irresistible foreboding that if he attacked the girl he should lose her forever, he would long ere that have set free the wild beast within him. And in just those times did he drink without measure and memory. Meanwhile relations in the house had become unendurable, seasoned with bitterness and poison. The Krepetski old maids hated Anulka, not only because she was younger than they and more beautiful, but because people loved her, and because Martsian took her part for every reason, and even for no reason. They flamed up at last with implacable hatred toward their brother; but seeing that Anulka never complained, they tortured her all the more stubbornly. Once Agneshka burnt her with a red-hot shovel, as if by accident. Martsian, hearing of this through the servants, went to ask pardon of the young lady, and beg her to seek his protection at all times; but he pushed up to her with such insistence, and fell to kissing her hand with such greed and so disgustingly, that she fled from him, unable to repress her abhorrence. Thereupon he broke into a rage and beat his sister so viciously that for two days she feigned illness.