"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 she had, she simply had to paint it!
So that she talked of almost nothing else for the entire half hour of her visit.
Prince Shch. was amiable and nice, as usual, asked the prince about former times, recalled the circumstances of their first acquaintance, so that almost nothing was said about the day before.
Finally Adelaida could not stand it and, smiling, confessed that they had come incognito; with that, however, the confessions ended, though this incognito made one think that the parents, that is, mainly Lizaveta Prokofyevna, were somehow especially ill-disposed.
But Adelaida and Prince Shch. did not utter a single word either about her, or about Aglaya, or even about Ivan Fyodorovich during their visit.
They left for a walk again, but did not invite the prince to join them.
Of an invitation to call on them there was not so much as a hint; in that regard Adelaida even let slip a very characteristic little phrase: speaking of one of her watercolors, she suddenly wanted very much to show it to him.