Yudushka spat in disgust and returned the letter. For a while Arina Petrovna was pensive and silent.
"Mother dear, you haven't answered them yet?"
"No, not yet. I just got the letter yesterday. I came here on purpose to show it to you, but between this and that I almost forgot all about it."
"How can I? I must account to them. Pogorelka is theirs, you know."
Yudushka also became pensive. A sinister plan flashed through his mind.
"And I keep wondering how they will preserve themselves in that foul den," Arina Petrovna continued. "You know how it is in these things--once you stumble, you can't get your maiden honor back! Go hunt for it!"
"Much they need it!" Yudushka snarled back.
"Still, you know. Honor is a girl's best treasure, one may say. Who will marry a girl without it?"
"Nowadays, mother dear, unmarried people live like married ones. Nowadays they laugh at the precepts of religion. They get married without benefit of clergy, like heathens. They call it civil marriage."
Yudushka suddenly recollected that he, too, was living in sinful relationship with a daughter of the clergy.
"Of course, sometimes you can't help it," he hastened to add. "If a man, let us say, is in full vigor and a widower--in an emergency the law itself is often modified."
"Yes, of course. When hard pressed a snipe sings like a nightingale. Even saints sin when sorely tried, let alone us mortals."
"Yes, that's just it. Do you know what I would do if I were you?"
"I would insist that they make Pogorelka over to you in full legal fashion."
"Well, I have a deed giving me the full powers and rights of a manager."
"Manager is not enough. You ought to get a deed that would entitle you to sell and mortgage it, in a word, to dispose of the property as you see fit."
Arina Petrovna lowered her eyes and remained silent.
"Of course, it is a matter that requires deliberation. Think it over, mother dear," Yudushka insisted.
But Arina Petrovna said nothing. Though age had considerably dulled her powers of judgment, she was somehow uneasy about Yudushka's insinuations. She was afraid of Yudushka, and loath to part with the warmth, spaciousness, and abundance that reigned at Golovliovo, but at the same time she felt that Yudushka had something up his sleeve when he spoke of the Pogorelka deed, and was casting a new snare. The situation grew so embarrassing that she began to scold herself inwardly for having shown him the letter. Happily Yevpraksia came to the rescue.