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166
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
marry Sönya. This declaration caused much anxiety
to the three conspirators. How could they induce
Sonya’s father to allow her, hardly more than a child,
to marry, while her elder sister, already twenty-three
years of age, remained unmarried ? They knew that
if a moderately suitable match had been proposed for
the latter, her father would not have been obdurate.
In fact, Aniuta gave him much anxiety by her
unaccountable and imaginative nature. She was, moreover,
of an age at which she ought to have been married.
Certainly the student Kovalévsky was young, but lie
had before him a promising future, and no doubt he
would have been accepted willingly enough for the
eldest daughter.
But with regard to Sönya it was altogether a
different matter.
The proposal now made to the father was absolutely
refused without appeal; and a return to the
country-place of the family, Palibino, was immediately
arranged.
The girls were in despair at returning to Palibino,
for this meant the surrender of the hopes and interests
which had been to them the very breath of life. It was
a return to a prison, but without the charm of true
martyrdom in a great cause. Indeed, a real
imprisonment would have been easier for them to bear than
the unpoetic banishment with which they were now
threatened.
The timid Sönya took a bold resolution. The tender
young girl, who coidd not bear an unkind glance or a
word of disapproval from those she loved, at this
critical moment became like steel. For though of a
delicate, sympathetic, and affectionate nature, she had
within her a vein of sternness and flint-like inflexibility,
which came to the fore at any crisis. She who could,
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