"Ha, ha, ha! He has run off with Bethsaba and married her!" Ivan Maximovitch took the matter as a joke. He had expected worse. Indeed, he could rejoice in that Bethsaba had been carried off, destined as she had been to St. Katherine's Convent. His wife's laughter still further misled him, and he thought well to join in it. Now, if his tears had met with but mediocre success, his laughter obtained him an open attack. The Princess first flung the crushed-up letter at his head, then, rushing at him like a fury, hissed out through her clinched teeth: "This was your work, wretch! This was connived between you!" "Who?" asked the Prince, in amazement. "You--and your sweetheart--that Witch of Endor! You spun the web in which that girl was caught for Pushkin. You prepared the poison in which this dagger is steeped." "Madame, I am at a loss to understand why the fact of Pushkin's marrying Bethsaba Dilarianoff should excite you to such fury!" Korynthia saw that by her vehemence she had almost been led into self-betrayal; so said, calmly: "You do not understand! This is no question of love, but of high-treason! What would it matter to me if a Circassian Princess chose to fall in love with my lowest groom? He would probably be too good for her! But do you know why Pushkin has married this girl? In order to discover the Czar's secrets, which he confided to his daughter, and which were repeated to her friend Bethsaba. Now these secrets, through Pushkin, will become the common property of the Czar's enemies! Thus, you ruin yourself if you are on the side of the Czar; or the Czar, if you conspire against him. And this is what you two have done!" Prince Ghedimin stood as if turned to stone. His wife had triumphed. Her words bore so clearly the stamp of truth that defence was not to be thought of. "Yes. It was a plot among you all!" continued his wife, furiously. "You availed yourselves of the illness of the one to entice the other from me. In order to detain me at home, and to prevent my watching over the child intrusted to my care, you sent Pushkin to me with a poem, and, instead of coming to receive his answer, the cowardly fellow steals away with a foolish, inexperienced girl from the very death-chamber of her friend. Out with such people! Such treachery, deceit, betrayal! You are worthy one of another. A pack of actors and actresses! Out of my room! Away with you!" When women take to abuse, men are nowhere. Their reasoning powers are gone. Prince Ghedimin was a wise and good man, and innocent as a child of this crime; which, after all, was no crime at all. Yet after this torrent of abuse he felt a very criminal who had brought about an act of the greatest, most irreparable evil with the coldest calculation, and, in this frame of mind, was glad to be permitted to leave his home and seek his gondola.