By ten o’clock in the morning a strange and almost incredible rumour was in full swing all over the town: it was received by society, of course, with full measure of spiteful joy, just as we all love to receive delightfully scandalous stories of anyone about us. “To lose one’s sense of shame to such an extent!” people said one to another. “To humiliate oneself so, and to neglect the first rules of propriety! To loose the bands of decency altogether like this, really!” etc., etc. But here is what had happened. Early in the morning, something after six o’clock, a poor piteous-looking old woman came hurriedly to the door of Maria Alexandrovna’s house, and begged the maid to wake Miss Zina up as quickly, as possible,—_only_ Miss Zina, and very quietly, so that her mother should not hear of it, if possible. Zina, pale and miserable, ran out to the old woman immediately. The latter fell at Zina’s feet and kissed them and begged her with tears to come with her at once to see poor Vaísia, her son, who had been so bad, _so_ bad all night that she did not think he could live another day. The old woman told Zina that Vaísia had sent to beg her to come and bid him farewell in this his death hour: he conjured her to come by all the blessed angels, and by all their past—otherwise he must die in despair. Zina at once decided to go, in spite of the fact that, by so doing, she would be justifying all the scandal and slanders disseminated about her in former days, as to the intercepted letter, her visits to him, and so on. Without a word to her mother, then, she donned her cloak and started off with the old woman, passing through the whole length of the town, into one of the poorest slums of Mordasof—and stopped at a little low wretched house, with small miserable windows, and snow piled round the basement for warmth. In this house, in a tiny room, more than half of which was occupied by an enormous stove, on a wretched bed, and covered with a miserably thin quilt, lay a young man, pale and haggard: his eyes were ablaze with the fire of fever, his hands were dry and thin, and he was breathing with difficulty and very hoarsely. He looked as though he might have been handsome once, but disease had put its finger on his features and made them dreadful to look upon and sad withal, as are so many dying consumptive patients’ faces. His old mother who had fed herself for a year past with the conviction that her son would recover, now saw at last that Vaísia was not to live. She stood over him, bowed down with her grief—tearless, and looked and looked, and could not look enough; and felt, but could not realize, that this dear son of hers must in a few days be buried in the miserable Mordasof churchyard, far down beneath the snow and frozen earth!