Varvara, to get even with him for what had happened before the marriage, tormented him with vague hints, taunts and half-timid, malignant insinuations. She smiled insolently, and said to him in that strained voice which is usually heard from a person who lies knowingly without the hope of being believed: "How should I know where the Princess lives now?" "You're lying--you do know!" said Peredonov in terror. He did not know what to believe--the meaning of her words, or the lie betrayed in the sound of her voice--and this, like everything he did not understand, terrified him. Varvara retorted: "What an idea! Perhaps she left Peter for somewhere else. She doesn't have to ask me when she goes away." "But perhaps she really has come here?" asked Peredonov timidly. "Perhaps she really has come here!" Varvara mimicked him. "She's smitten with you and she's come here to see you." "You're a liar! Is it likely that she'd fall in love with me?" Varvara laughed spitefully. From that time Peredonov began to look about attentively for the Princess. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was looking in at the window, through the door, eavesdropping, and whispering with Varvara. * * * * * Time passed by and the paper, announcing his appointment as inspector, so eagerly expected day after day, still did not come. He had no private information of the situation. Peredonov did not dare to find out from the Princess herself--Varvara constantly frightened him by saying that the Princess was a very great lady, and he thought that if he wrote to her it might cause him extreme unpleasantness. He did not know precisely what they could do to him if the Princess complained of him, but this made him think of dreadful possibilities. Varvara said to him: "Don't you know aristocrats? You must wait until they act of themselves. But once you remind them, they get offended, and it'll be the worse for you. They're so touchy. They're proud, and they like to be taken at their word." And Peredonov was still credulous. But he got angry with the Princess. Sometimes he even thought that the Princess would inform against him in order to rid herself of her obligations to him. Or else she would inform against him because he had married Varvara when perhaps she herself was in love with him. That was why she had surrounded him with spies, he thought, who kept an eye on him everywhere. They had so hemmed him in that he had no air to breathe, no light. She was not an eminent lady for nothing. She could do whatever she liked. From spite he invented most unlikely stories about the Princess. He told Routilov and Volodin that he had formerly been her lover and that she had given him large sums of money. "But I've drunk it all away," he said. "Why the devil should I save it! She also promised me a pension for life, but she took me in over that." "And would you have accepted it?" asked Routilov with a snigger.