What did it signify?
Everybody would know it all before twenty-four hours had passed by.

Nina, however, was determined to defend herself at the present moment, thinking that there was something of injustice in her father's remarks.

"As for seeing him often, father, I have done it because your business has required it.
When you were ill in April I had to be there almost daily." "But you need not have gone to-night.

He did not send for you." "But it is needful that something should be done to get for him that which is his own." As she said this there came to her a sting of conscience, a thought that reminded her that, though she was not lying to her father in words, she was in fact deceiving him; and remembering her assertion to her lover that she had never spoken falsely to her father, she blushed with shame as she sat in the darkness of her seat.
"To-morrow father," she said, "I will talk to you more about this, and you shall not at any rate say that I keep anything from you." "I have never said so, Nina." "It is late now, father.

Will you not go to bed ?" Old Balatka yielded to this suggestion, and went to his bed; and Nina, after some hour or two, went to hers.