P.S.
The rest of the two hundred roubles will be faithfully paid back to you in time.
"What a muddle!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna concluded, tossing the note back. "Not worth reading.
What are you grinning at?"
"You must agree that you enjoyed reading it."
"What!
This vanity-eaten galimatias!
But don't you see they've all lost their minds from pride and vanity?"
"Yes, but all the same he apologized, he's broken with Doktorenko, and the vainer he is, the dearer the cost to his vanity.
Oh, what a little child you are, Lizaveta Prokofyevna!"
"Are you intent on getting a slap in the face from me finally, or what?"
"No, not at all.
It's because you're glad of the note, but you conceal it.
Why are you ashamed of your feelings?
You're like that in everything."
"Don't you dare set foot in my house now," Lizaveta Prokofyevna jumped up, turning pale with wrath, "from now on I don't want to hear a peep from you ever again!"
"But in three days you'll come yourself and invite me . . . Well, aren't you ashamed?
These are your best feelings, why be ashamed of them?
You only torment yourself."
"I'll die before I ever invite you!
I'll forget your name!
I have forgotten it!"
She rushed for the door.
"I've already been forbidden to visit you anyway!" the prince called after her.
"Wha-a-at?
Who has forbidden you?"
She instantly turned around, as if pricked by a needle.
The prince hesitated before answering; he felt he had made an accidental but serious slip.
"Who forbade you?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried furiously.
"Aglaya Ivanovna did . . ."
"When?
Well, spe-e-eak!!!"
"This morning she sent to tell me that I must never dare come to see you."
Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood like a post, but she was thinking it through.
"What did she send?
Whom did she send?
Through that brat?
Verbally?" she suddenly exclaimed again.
"I received a note," said the prince.
"Where?
Give it to me!
At once!"
The prince thought for a moment, but nevertheless took from his waistcoat pocket a careless scrap of paper on which was written:
Prince Lev Nikolaevich!
If, after all that has happened, you intend to surprise me by visiting our dacha, then you may be assured that you will not find me among the delighted.
Aglaya Epanchin.
Lizaveta Prokofyevna thought for a moment; then she suddenly rushed to the prince, seized him by the arm, and dragged him with her.
"Now!
Go!
On purpose, now, this minute!" she cried out in a fit of extraordinary excitement and impatience.