'Her sister too . . . and a sharp one too, as sharp as a lance. A terrible woman!'
XIV
'What a place to find a Werter!' I thought next day, as I set off again towards the brigadier's dwelling. I was at that time very young, and that was possibly why I thought it my duty not to believe in the lasting nature of love. Still, I was impressed and somewhat puzzled by the story I had heard, and felt an intense desire to stir up the old man, to make him talk freely. 'I'll first refer to Suvorov again,' so I resolved within myself; 'there must be some spark of his former fire hidden within him still . . . and then, when he's warmed up, I'll turn the conversation on that . . . what's her name? . . . Agrafena Ivanovna. A queer name for a "Charlotte"—Agrafena!'
I found my Werter-Guskov in the middle of a tiny kitchen-garden, a few steps from the lodge, near the old framework of a never-finished hut, overgrown with nettles. On the mildewed upper beams of this skeleton hut some miserable-looking turkey poults were scrambling, incessantly slipping and flapping their wings and cackling. There was some poor sort of green stuff growing in two or three borders. The brigadier had just pulled a young
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