"What is it about, explain to me, for Christ's sake?
Don't you see that it concerns me directly?
Evgeny Pavlych was blackened here."
"Prince!
Illustrious Prince!" Lebedev squirmed again. "You don't let me speak the whole truth; I've already tried to tell you the truth; more than once; you wouldn't let me go on . . ."
The prince paused and pondered.
"Well, all right, speak the truth," he said heavily, obviously after a great struggle.
"Aglaya Ivanovna . . ." Lebedev began at once.
"Shut up, shut up!" the prince shouted furiously, turning all red with indignation and perhaps with shame.
"It can't be, it's all nonsense!
You thought it all up yourself, or some madmen like you.
I never want to hear any more of it from you!"
Late at night, past ten o'clock, Kolya arrived with a whole bagful of news.
His news was of a double sort: from Petersburg and from Pavlovsk.
He quickly told the main Petersburg news (mostly about Ippolit and yesterday's story), in order to return to it later, and hastened on to the Pavlovsk news.
Three hours ago he came back from Petersburg and, without stopping at the prince's, went straight to the Epanchins'.
"Terrible goings-on there!"
Naturally, the carriage was in the foreground, but something else had certainly happened there, something unknown to him and the prince.
"I naturally didn't spy and didn't want to ask questions; however, they received me well, better than I expected, but not a word about you, Prince!"
The chiefest and most interesting thing was that Aglaya had quarreled with her family over Ganya.
What the details of the matter were, he did not know, only it was over Ganya (imagine that!), and they had quarreled terribly, so it was something important.
The general arrived late, arrived scowling, arrived with Evgeny Pavlovich, who was received excellently, and Evgeny Pavlovich himself was surprisingly merry and nice.
The most capital news was that Lizaveta Prokofyevna, without any noise, sent for Varvara Ardalionovna, who was sitting with the girls, and threw her out of the house once and for all, in the most courteous way, incidentally—"I heard it from Varya herself."
But when Varya left Lizaveta Prokofyevna and said good-bye to the girls, they did not even know that she had been denied the house once and for all and that she was saying good-bye to them for the last time.
"But Varvara Ardalionovna was here at seven o'clock," said the astonished prince.
"And she was thrown out before eight or at eight.
I'm very sorry for Varya, sorry for Ganya ... no doubt it's their eternal intrigues, they can't do without them.
And I've never been able to find out what they're planning, and don't want to know.
But I assure you, my dear, my kind Prince, that Ganya has a heart.
He's a lost man in many respects, of course, but in many respects there are qualities in him that are worth seeking out, and I'll never forgive myself for not understanding him before ... I don't know if I should go on now, after the story with Varya.
True, I took a completely independent and separate stand from the very beginning, but all the same I must think it over."
"You needn't feel too sorry for your brother," the prince observed to him. "If things have come to that, it means that Gavrila Ardalionovich is dangerous in Lizaveta Prokofyevna's eyes, and that means that certain of his hopes are being affirmed."
"How, what hopes?" Kolya cried out in amazement. "You don't think Aglaya ... it can't be!"
The prince said nothing.
"You're a terrible skeptic, Prince," Kolya added after a couple of minutes. "I've noticed that since a certain time you've become an extreme skeptic; you're beginning not to believe anything and to suppose everything . . . have I used the word 'skeptic' correctly in this case?"
"I think so, though, anyhow, I don't know for certain myself."
"But I myself am renouncing the word 'skeptic,' and have found a new explanation," Kolya suddenly cried. "You're not a skeptic, you're jealous!
You're infernally jealous of Ganya over a certain proud girl!"
Having said this, Kolya jumped up and burst into such laughter as he may never have laughed before.
Seeing the prince turn all red, Kolya laughed even harder: he was terribly pleased with the thought that the prince was jealous over Aglaya, but he fell silent at once when he noticed that the prince was sincerely upset.
After that they spent another hour or hour and a half in serious and preoccupied conversation.
The next day the prince spent the whole morning in Petersburg on a certain urgent matter.
Returning to Pavlovsk past four in the afternoon, he met Ivan Fyodorovich at the railway station.
The latter quickly seized him by the arm, looked around as if in fright, and drew the prince with him to the first-class car, so that they could ride together.
He was burning with the desire to discuss something important.
"First of all, my dear Prince, don't be angry with me, and if there was anything on my part—forget it.
I'd have called on you yesterday, but I didn't know how Lizaveta Prokofyevna would ... At home . . . it's simply hell, a riddling sphinx has settled in with us, and I go about understanding nothing.
As for you, I think you're the least to blame, though, of course, much of it came about through you.
You see, Prince, to be a philanthropist is nice, but not very.
You've probably tasted the fruits of it by now.