Lebedev was surprised and even puzzled that the prince was already getting up.
"You've grown awfully indifferent, sir, heh, heh!" he ventured to observe obsequiously.
"I really feel unwell—my head is heavy after the journey," the prince replied, frowning.
"You could do with a bit of dacha life, sir," Lebedev hinted timidly.
The prince stood thinking.
"And I myself, after a three-day wait, will be going to my dacha with the whole household, so as to look after the newborn nestling and meanwhile fix up the little house here.
And that's also in Pavlovsk."
"You're also going to Pavlovsk?" the prince asked suddenly.
"How is it everyone here goes to Pavlovsk?
And you say you have a dacha there?"
"Not everyone goes to Pavlovsk.
Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn is letting me have one of the dachas he came by cheaply.
It's nice, and sublime, and green, and cheap, and bon ton, and musical, and that's why we all go to Pavlovsk.
I, incidentally, will be in a little wing, while the house itself ..."
"You've rented it out?"
"N-n-no.
Not . . . not quite, sir."
"Rent it to me," the prince suddenly suggested.
It seems that this was just what Lebedev had been driving at.
The idea had flashed through his mind three minutes earlier.
And yet he no longer needed a tenant; he already had a candidate who had informed him that he might take the dacha.
Lebedev knew positively, however, that there was no "might" and that he would certainly take it.
Yet the thought had suddenly flashed through his mind, a very fruitful one by his reckoning, of renting the dacha to the prince, under the pretext that the other tenant had not expressed himself definitively.
"A whole collision and a whole new turn of affairs" suddenly presented itself to his imagination.
He received the prince's suggestion almost with rapture, so that he even waved his hands at the direct question of the price.
"Well, as you wish. I'll ask. You won't come out the loser."
They were both leaving the garden.
"I could ... I could ... if you like, I could tell you something quite interesting, most esteemed Prince, concerning the same matter," Lebedev muttered, joyfully twining himself about at the prince's side.
The prince stopped.
"Darya Alexeevna also has a little dacha in Pavlovsk, sir."
"Well?"
"And a certain person is friends with her and apparently intends to visit her often in Pavlovsk.
With a purpose."
"Well?"
"Aglaya Ivanovna ..."
"Ah, enough, Lebedev!" the prince interrupted with some unpleasant feeling, as if he had been touched on his sore spot. "It's all . . . not like that.
Better tell me, when are you moving?
The sooner the better for me, because I'm staying in a hotel . . ."
While talking, they left the garden and, without going inside, crossed the courtyard and reached the gate.
"It would be best," Lebedev finally decided, "if you moved here straight from the hotel today, and the day after tomorrow we can all go to Pavlovsk together."
"I'll have to see," the prince said pensively and went out of the gate.
Lebedev followed him with his eyes.
He was struck by the prince's sudden absentmindedness.
He had even forgotten to say "good-bye" as he left, had not even nodded his head, which was incompatible with what Lebedev knew of the prince's courtesy and attentiveness.
III
It was getting towards noon.
The prince knew that of all the Epanchins the only one he might find in town now was the general, because of his official duties, and that, too, was unlikely.
It occurred to him that the general would perhaps just take him and drive straight to Pavlovsk, and he wanted very much to make one visit before that.
At the risk of coming late to the Epanchins' and delaying his trip to Pavlovsk till tomorrow, the prince decided to go and look for the house he had wanted so much to call at.
This visit, however, was risky for him in a certain sense.