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Bridegrooms had swarmed by the hundred around the heiress of the great fortune; but the society which flocked to Pólozof's dinners and suppers was a society of that excessively dubious type, of that excessively dubious refinement, which is generally found crowding the parlors of all such rich people as Pólozof, lifted above the more or less polite but still not fashionable circle in which they are born, without having any relationship or connection in the more or less genuinely polite society of the fashionable world. They become the benefactors of cunning adventurers and dandies who are absolutely indecent in their outward appearance, without speaking of their inward qualities. Therefore, Katerina Vasílyevna became interested when among the number of admirers came a genuine society man of absolutely good breeding; he behaved with so much more refinement; he spoke so much more sensibly and wittily than the others. Her father soon noticed that she was going to prefer him above the others; and, as an active, decided, substantial man, he immediately had a talk with his daughter: --
"My dear Kátya -- Sólovtsof, look out for him; he is a very bad man, a perfectly heartless man; you would be so unhappy with him, that I would rather see you dead than his wife. It would be easier for both me and you."