Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/216

Rh dropped this bait. And Paklin rose to it at once.)

'Since you know that,' he began, and a second time he bit his tongue. But it was too late. From the mere glance flung at him by Sipyagin he realised that he had been playing with him all the while, as a cat plays with a mouse.

'I must tell your Excellency, though,' the luckless wretch faltered, 'that I really know nothing.'

'And I ask you no questions, upon my word! What do you mean? What do you take me, and yourself, for?' said Sipyagin haughtily, and he promptly withdrew into his ministerial heights.

And again Paklin felt himself a wretched little, entrapped creature. Till that instant he kept his cigar in the corner of his mouth, remote from Sipyagin, and had stealthily puffed the smoke on one side; now he took it out of his mouth altogether, and ceased smoking.

'Good Lord!' he groaned inwardly—and the sweat trickled over his shoulders more plentifully than before. 'What have I done! I have betrayed everything and every one! I've been fooled, bought with a good cigar! I'm an informer and what can be done to undo the harm now? Lord!'