What's more, she promptly confiscated Stepan Trofimovitch and carried him off to the drawing-room--as though he had had no interview with Lembke, or as though it was not worth prolonging if he had.

I repeat again, I think that in this, Yulia Mihailovna, in spite of her aristocratic tone, made another great mistake.

And Karmazinov particularly did much to aggravate this.

(He had taken part in the expedition at Yulia Mihailovna's special request, and in that way had, incidentally, paid his visit to Varvara Petrovna, and she was so poor-spirited as to be perfectly delighted at it.) On seeing Stepan Trofimovitch, he called out from the doorway (he came in behind the rest) and pressed forward to embrace him, even interrupting Yulia Mihailovna.
"What years, what ages! At last..._excellent ami._" He made as though to kiss him, offering his cheek, of course, and Stepan Trofimovitch was so fluttered that he could not avoid saluting it.
_"Cher,"_ he said to me that evening, recalling all the events of that day, "I wondered at that moment which of us was the most contemptible: he, embracing me only to humiliate me, or I, despising him and his face and kissing it on the spot, though I might have turned away....

Foo!" "Come, tell me about yourself, tell me everything," Karmazinov drawled and lisped, as though it were possible for him on the spur of the moment to give an account of twenty-five years of his life.