“What a question! Why, you yourself, if you pleased! and why not, pray? In the first place, you are good-looking, you are a widow, you are generous, you are poor (at least I don’t think you are very rich). Then you are a very reasonable woman: you’ll learn to love him, and take good care of him; you’ll send that other woman to the deuce, and take your husband abroad, where you will feed him on pudding and lollipops till the moment of his quitting this wicked world, which will be in about a year, or in a couple of months perhaps. After that, you emerge a princess, a rich widow, and, as a prize for your goodness to the old gentleman, you’ll marry a fine young marquis, or a governor-general, or somebody of the sort! There—that’s a pretty enough prospect, isn’t it?” “Tfu! Goodness me! I should fall in love with him at once, out of pure gratitude, if he only proposed to me!” said the widow, with her black eyes all ablaze; “but, of course, it’s all nonsense!” “Nonsense, is it? Shall I make it sound sense, then, for you? Ask me prettily, and if I don’t make you his betrothed by this evening, you may cut my little finger off! Why, there’s nothing in the world easier than to talk uncle into anything you please! He’ll only say, ‘Ye—yes, ye—yes,’ just as you heard him now! We’ll marry him so that he doesn’t know anything about it, if you like? We’ll deceive him and marry him, if you please! Any way you like, it can be done! Why, it’s for his own good; it’s out of pity for himself! Don’t you think, seriously, Nastasia Petrovna, that you had better put on some smart clothes in any case?” Paul’s enthusiasm amounted by now to something like madness, while the widow’s mouth watered at his idea, in spite of her better judgment. “I know, I know I look horridly untidy!” she said. “I go about anyhow, nowadays! There’s nothing to dress for. Do I really look like a regular cook?” All this time Maria Alexandrovna sat still, with a strange expression on her face. I shall not be far wrong if I say that she listened to Paul’s wild suggestion with a look of terror, almost: she was confused and startled; at last she recollected herself, and spoke. “All this is very nice, of course; but at the same time it is utter nonsense, and perfectly out of the question!” she observed cuttingly. “Why, why, my good Maria Alexandrovna? Why is it such nonsense, or why out of the question?” “For many reasons; and, principally because you are, as the prince is also, a guest in my house; and I cannot permit anyone to forget their respect towards my establishment! I shall consider your words as a joke, Paul Alexandrovitch, and nothing more! Here comes the prince—thank goodness!” “Here I am!” cried the old man as he entered. “It’s a wo—wonderful thing how many good ideas of all s—sorts I’m having to-day! and another day I may spend the whole of it without a single one! As—tonishing? not one all day!”