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is, of the man who had been such a fatal influence in Grush-
enka’s life, and whose arrival she was expecting with such
emotion and dread. It is true that of late Grushenka had
been very silent about it. Yet he was perfectly aware of a
letter she had received a month ago from her seducer, and
had heard of it from her own lips. He partly knew, too, what
the letter contained. In a moment of spite Grushenka had
shown him that letter, but to her astonishment he attached
hardly any consequence to it. It would be hard to say why
this was. Perhaps, weighed down by all the hideous hor-
ror of his struggle with his own father for this woman, he
was incapable of imagining any danger more terrible, at any
rate for the time. He simply did not believe in a suitor who
suddenly turned up again after five years’ disappearance,
still less in his speedy arrival. Moreover, in the ‘officer’s’
first letter which had been shown to Mitya, the possibili-
ty of his new rival’s visit was very vaguely suggested. The
letter was very indefinite, high-flown, and full of sentimen-
tality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from
him the last lines of the letter, in which his return was al-
luded to more definitely. He had, besides, noticed at that
moment, he remembered afterwards, a certain involuntary
proud contempt for this missive from Siberia on Grushen-
ka’s face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had passed
later between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had
completely forgotten the officer’s existence.
He felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn
things might take, his final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch
was close upon him, and must be decided before anything