You took no trouble about mine, but
reprimanded me. So now give up your own."
The pallid prominent personage almost died of fright. Brave as he was
in the office and in the presence of inferiors generally, and
although, at the sight of his manly form and appearance, every one
said, "Ugh! how much character he has!" at this crisis, he, like many
possessed of an heroic exterior, experienced such terror, that, not
without cause, he began to fear an attack of illness. He flung his
cloak hastily from his shoulders and shouted to his coachman in an
unnatural voice, "Home at full speed!" The coachman, hearing the tone
which is generally employed at critical moments, and even accompanied
by something much more tangible, drew his head down between his
shoulders in case of an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on
like an arrow. In a little more than six minutes the prominent
personage was at the entrance of his own house. Pale, thoroughly
scared, and cloakless, he went home instead of to Karolina Ivanovna's,
reached his room somehow or other, and passed the night in the direst
distress; so that the next morning over their tea, his daughter said,
"You are very pale to-day, papa.
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