it!—and delicately, carefully, as only you know how to” (Alyosha blushed), “manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred roubles. He will be sure to take it.... I mean, persuade him to take it.... Or, rather, what do I mean? You see it’s not by way of compensation to prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he meant to), but simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s betrothed, not from himself.... But you know.... I would go myself, but you’ll know how to do it ever so much better. He lives in Lake Street, in the house of a woman called Kalmikov.... For God’s sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now ... now I am rather ... tired. Good-by!” She turned and disappeared behind the portière so quickly that Alyosha had not time to utter a word, though he wanted to speak. He longed to beg her pardon, to blame himself, to say something, for his heart was full and he could not bear to go out of the room without it. But Madame Hohlakov took him by the hand and drew him along with her. In the hall she stopped him again as before. “She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming, generous,” she exclaimed, in a half-whisper. “Oh, how I love her, especially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, you didn’t know, but I must tell you, that we all, all—both her aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even—have been hoping and praying for nothing for the last month but that she may give up your favorite Dmitri, who takes no notice of her and does not care for her, and may marry Ivan Fyodorovitch—such an excellent and cultivated young man, who loves her more than anything in the world. We are in a regular plot to bring it about, and I am even staying on here perhaps on that account.” “But she has been crying—she has been wounded again,” cried Alyosha. “Never trust a woman’s tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.” “Mamma, you are spoiling him,” Lise’s little voice cried from behind the door. “No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,” Alyosha repeated unconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of remorse for his indiscretion. “Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am ready to say so a thousand times over.” “Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?” Lise’s voice was heard again. “I somehow fancied all at once,” Alyosha went on as though he had not heard Lise, “that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing.... What will happen now?” “To whom, to whom?” cried Lise. “Mamma, you really want to be the death of me. I ask you and you don’t answer.” At the moment the maid ran in. “Katerina Ivanovna is ill.... She is crying, struggling ... hysterics.” “What is the matter?” cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety. “Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!”