Ippolit quickly turned to him with the most furious spite, and every little line of his face seemed to quiver and speak.

"Ah, you were afraid of that! 'It had to be so,' in your opinion? Know, then, that if I hate anyone here," he screamed, wheezing, shrieking, spraying from his mouth, "and I hate all of you, all of you!—but you, you Jesuitical, treacly little soul, idiot, millionaire-benefactor, I hate you more than anyone or anything in the world! I understood you and hated you long ago, when I'd only heard about you, I hated you with all the hatred of my soul ... It was you who set it all up! It was you who drove me into a fit! You've driven a dying man to shame, you, you, you are to blame for my

mean faintheartedness! I'd kill you, if I stayed alive! I don't need your benefactions, I won't accept anything from anybody, do you hear, from anybody! I was delirious, and don't you dare to triumph! ... I curse you all now and forever!"

By then he was completely out of breath.

"Ashamed of his tears!" Lebedev whispered to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. " 'It had to be so!' That's the prince for you! Read right through him ..."

But Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not deign to look at him. She stood proud, erect, her head thrown back, and scrutinized "these wretched little people" with scornful curiosity. When Ippolit finished, the general heaved his shoulders; she looked him up and down wrathfully, as if demanding an account of his movement, and at once turned to the prince.

"Thank you, Prince, eccentric friend of our house, for the pleasant evening you have provided for us all. Your heart must surely be glad of your success in hitching us to your foolery . . . Enough, dear friend of our house, thank you for at least allowing us finally to have a look at you! . . ."

She indignantly began straightening her mantilla, waiting until "they" left. At that moment a hired droshky, which Doktorenko had sent Lebedev's son, a high-school student, to fetch a quarter of an hour ago, drove up for "them." Right after his wife, the general put in his own little word:

"Indeed, Prince, I never expected . . . after everything, after all our friendly connections . . . and, finally, Lizaveta Prokofyevna . . ."

"But how, how can this be!" exclaimed Adelaida, and she quickly went up to the prince and gave him her hand.

The prince, looking like a lost man, smiled at her. Suddenly a hot, quick whisper seemed to scald his ear.

"If you don't drop these loathsome people at once, I'll hate you alone all my life, all my life!" whispered Aglaya; she was as if in a frenzy, but she turned away before the prince had time to look at her. However, there was nothing and no one for him to drop: they had meanwhile managed to put the sick Ippolit into the cab, and it drove off.

"Well, is this going to go on long, Ivan Fyodorovich? What do you think? How long am I to suffer from these wicked boys?"

"I, my dear . . . naturally, I'm prepared . . . and the prince . . ."

Ivan Fyodorovich nevertheless held out his hand to the prince, but had no time for a handshake and rushed after Lizaveta

Prokofyevna, who was noisily and wrathfully going down the steps from the terrace. Adelaida, her fiancé, and Alexandra took leave of the prince sincerely and affectionately. Evgeny Pavlovich was also among them, and he alone was merry.

"It turned out as I thought! Only it's too bad that you, too, suffered, poor man," he whispered with the sweetest smile.

Aglaya left without saying good-bye.

But the adventures of that evening were not over yet. Lizaveta Prokofyevna was to endure one more quite unexpected meeting.

Before she had time to go down the steps to the road (which skirted the park), a splendid equipage, a carriage drawn by two white horses, raced past the prince's dacha. Two magnificent ladies were sitting in the carriage. But before it had gone ten paces past, the carriage stopped abruptly; one of the ladies quickly turned, as if she had suddenly seen some needed acquaintance.

"Evgeny Pavlych! Is that you, dear?" a ringing, beautiful voice suddenly cried, which made the prince, and perhaps someone else, give a start. "Well, I'm so glad I've finally found you! I sent a messenger to you in town—two messengers! I've been looking for you all day!"

Evgeny Pavlovich stood on the steps as if thunderstruck. Lizaveta Prokofyevna also stopped in her tracks, but not in horror or petrified like Evgeny Pavlovich: she looked at the brazen woman with the same pride and cold contempt as at the "wretched little people" five minutes earlier, and at once shifted her intent gaze to Evgeny Pavlovich.

"News!" the ringing voice went on. "Don't worry about Kupfer's promissory notes; Rogozhin bought them up at thirty, I persuaded him. You can be at peace for at least another three months. And we'll probably come to terms with Biskup and all that riffraff in a friendly way! Well, so there, it means everything's all right! Cheer up. See you tomorrow!"

The carriage started off and soon vanished.

"She's crazy!" Evgeny Pavlovich cried at last, turning red with indignation and looking around in perplexity. "I have no idea what she's talking about! What promissory notes? Who is she?"

Lizaveta Prokofyevna went on looking at him for another two seconds; finally, she turned quickly and sharply to go to her own dacha, and the rest followed her. Exactly a minute later Evgeny Pavlovich went back to the prince's terrace in extreme agitation.

"Prince, you truly don't know what this means?"

"I don't know anything," replied the prince, who was under extreme and morbid strain himself.

"No?"

"No."

"I don't either," Evgeny Pavlovich suddenly laughed. "By God, I've had nothing to do with these promissory notes, believe my word of honor! . . . What's the matter, are you feeling faint?"

"Oh, no, no, I assure you . . ."

XI

Only three days later were the Epanchins fully propitiated. Though the prince blamed himself for many things, as usual, and sincerely expected to be punished, all the same he had at first a full inner conviction that Lizaveta Prokofyevna could not seriously be angry with him, but was more angry with herself. Thus it was that such a long period of enmity brought him by the third day to the gloomiest impasse. Other circumstances also brought him there, but one among them was predominant. For all three days it had been growing progressively in the prince's suspiciousness (and lately the prince had been blaming himself for the two extremes: his uncommonly "senseless and importunate" gullibility and at the same time his "dark and mean" suspiciousness). In short, by the end of the third day the adventure with the eccentric lady who had talked to Evgeny Pavlovich from her carriage had taken on terrifying and mysterious proportions in his mind. The essence of the mystery, apart from the other aspects of the matter, consisted for the prince in one grievous question: was it precisely he who was to blame for this new "monstrosity," or only . . . But he never finished who else. As for the letters N.F.B., that was, in his view, nothing but an innocent prank, even a most childish prank, so that it was shameful to reflect on it at all and in one respect even almost dishonest.

However, on the very first day after the outrageous "evening," of the disorder of which he had been so chiefly the "cause," the prince had the pleasure, in the morning, of receiving Prince Shch. and Adelaida: "they came, chiefly, to inquire after his health," came together, during a stroll. Adelaida had just noticed a tree in the park, a wonderful old tree, branchy, with long, crooked boughs, all in young green, with a hole and a split in it; she had decided that