XVII
Markelov's guests were still asleep when a messenger came to him with a letter from his sister, Madame Sipyagin. In the letter Valentina Mihalovna wrote to him of various trifling domestic details, asked him to send her back a book he had borrowed─and incidentally, in the postscript, told him of an 'amusing' piece of news: that his former flame, Marianna, was in love with the tutor, Nezhdanov and the tutor with her; that she, Valentina Mihalovna, was not repeating gossip─she had seen it all with her own eyes,and heard it with her own ears. Markelov's face grew dark as night . . . but he did not utter one word; he gave orders to give the book to the messenger, and when he saw Nezhdanov coming downstairs he said, 'Good morning' to him, just as usual─even gave him the promised packet of Kislyakov's epistles; he did not stop with him, though, but went out 'to see after things.' Nezhdanov went back to his room, and looked through the letters. The
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