He said a great deal more, but Varvara Petrovna was obstinately silent.

At last she informed him airily that she was prepared to buy their estate, and to pay for it the maximum price, that is, six or seven thousand (though four would have been a fair price for it).

Of the remaining eight thousand which had vanished with the woods she said not a word.
This conversation took place a month before the match was proposed to him.

Stepan Trofimovitch was overwhelmed, and began to ponder.

There might in the past have been a hope that his son would not come, after all--an outsider, that is to say, might have hoped so.