“Zee ferry pesht,” answered Kitaeva.  “Zee yoong voman is etucated and elecant.  She was prought up in a coot family and can reat French.  She tid have a trop too moch sometimes, put nefer forcot herself.  A ferry coot girl.”

Katusha looked at the woman, then suddenly turned her eyes on the jury and fixed them on Nekhludoff, and her face grew serious and even severe.  One of her serious eyes squinted, and those two strange eyes for some time gazed at Nekhludoff, who, in spite of the terrors that seized him, could not take his look off these squinting eyes, with their bright, clear whites.

He thought of that dreadful night, with its mist, the ice breaking on the river below, and when the waning moon, with horns turned upwards, that had risen towards morning, lit up something black and weird.  These two black eyes now looking at him reminded him of this weird, black something.  “She has recognised me,” he thought, and Nekhludoff shrank as if expecting a blow.  But she had not recognised him.  She sighed quietly and again looked at the president.  Nekhludoff also sighed.  “Oh, if it would only get on quicker,” he thought.

He now felt the same loathing and pity and vexation as when, out shooting, he was obliged to kill a wounded bird.  The wounded bird struggles in the game bag.  One is disgusted and yet feels pity, and one is in a hurry to kill the bird and forget it.

Such mixed feelings filled Nekhludoff’s breast as he sat listening to the examination of the witnesses.

CHAPTER XX.

The trial—­the medical report.

But, as if to spite him, the case dragged out to a great length.  After each witness had been examined separately and the expert last of all, and a great number of useless questions had been put, with the usual air of importance, by the public prosecutor and by both advocates, the president invited the jury to examine the objects offered as material evidence.  They consisted of an enormous diamond ring, which had evidently been worn on the first finger, and a test tube in which the poison had been analysed.  These things had seals and labels attached to them.

Just as the witnesses were about to look at these things, the public prosecutor rose and demanded that before they did this the results of the doctor’s examination of the body should be read.  The president, who was hurrying the business through as fast as he could in order to visit his Swiss friend, though he knew that the reading of this paper could have no other effect than that of producing weariness and putting off the dinner hour, and that the public prosecutor wanted it read simply because he knew he had a right to demand it, had no option but to express his consent.

The secretary got out the doctor’s report and again began to read in his weary lisping voice, making no distinction between the “r’s” and “l’s.”