VII.
Kirsánof could not give up the case; it was necessary to help Katerina Vasílyevna emerge from her blindness, and it was still more necessary to manage her father, to keep him up to his promise of not interfering. But he made it inconvenient to call upon the Polovtsófs, during the first few days after the crisis. Katerina Vasílyevna was still feeling exalted; if he saw, as was to be infallibly expected, that the "bridegroom" was a scoundrel, then, even his silent dissatisfaction with the "bridegroom," and not alone his upright and downright opinion, would be prejudicial; would still further kindle her excitement. Kirsánof called there one morning, after a week and a half, so as not directly to seek a meeting with the "bridegroom," but to secure Katerina Vasílyevna's permission. Katerina Vasílyevna was already beginning to look better; she was as yet very thin and pale, but was entirely well, though the former famous practitioner still prescribed for her; for, when Kirsánof again put her in his hands, he said, "Ask his advice; now none of his medicines will do you any harm, even if you should take them."
Katerina Vasílyevna met Kirsánof enthusiastically, and looked at him with wondering eyes, when he told her what he had come for.
"You saved my life, and yet you want to ask my permission to call on us!"
"But my calling upon you, without your consent, while he is here, might seem to you as an attempt, on my part, to interfere in your relations, if I came. You know my rule: not to do anything against the will of a person for whose benefit I would like to work."
Kirsánof came on the second or third evening, and found the "bridegroom" to be exactly what Pólozof described him, and Pólozof himself, in a proper state of mind; the well-trained old man did not interfere. Kirsánof spent the evening, giving no sign of what he thought of the "bridegroom," and as he said good night to Katerina Vasílyevna, he did not hint at all how the bridegroom pleased him.
This was quite enough to wake her curiosity and doubt. On the next day she kept thinking: "Kirsánof did not say a word about him. If he had made a good impression on
