You see there's something a little lame about our accounts--it must be confessed, in the end.

We've a great weakness for cards, you know....
But this is unnecessary, quite unnecessary, I'm sorry, I chatter too much.

But upon my word, Varvara Petrovna, he gave me a fright, and I really was half prepared to save him.

He really made me feel ashamed.
Did he expect me to hold a knife to his throat, or what?
Am I such a merciless creditor?
He writes something here of a dowry....

But are you really going to get married, Stepan Trofimovitch?
That would be just like you, to say a lot for the sake of talking.