The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova's, and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room and silently sat down on the window-sill.
"Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt's, but I hardly know her," said Shoustova.
Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather belt, came in from the next room.
"How do you do? Thanks for coming," she began as soon as she had taken the place next Shoustova's on the sofa.
"Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?"
"She does not complain," said Nekhludoff. "She says she feels perfectly happy."'
"Ah, that's like Vera. I know her," said the aunt, smiling and shaking her head. "One must know her. She has a fine character.
Everything for others; nothing for herself."
"No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece was imprisoned for nothing."
"Yes, that's true," said the aunt. "It is a dreadful business.
She suffered, in reality, because of me."
"Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the same.'
"Allow me to know better," said the aunt. "You see," she went on to Nekhludoff, "it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should say from whom she had them."