XXVIII.
This was towards the end of April. Towards the middle of June Lopukhóf returned; lived three weeks in Petersburg, then he left for Moscow, on business for the factory, as he said. On the twenty-first of July he left; and on the twenty-third of July, in the morning, happened the misunderstanding in the hotel at the station of the Moscow railroad, on account of the stranger not getting up; and two hours later came the scene in the Kamennoi Ostrof datcha. Now the sapient reader will not fail to have guessed who shot himself. "I saw long ago that it was Lopukhóf," says the sapient reader, in triumph at his perspicacity. Where could he have hid himself, and how did his cap have a bullet-hole through the top? "There is no need of asking; it is only a trick of his, but he caught himself in a net, the rascal," says the sapient reader. Nu! God be with thee; decide it just as thou pleasest; there's no reasoning with thee.
XXIX.
AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN.
Three hours after Kirsánof left, Viéra Pavlovna came to her senses, and almost her very first thought was, that it was impossible to leave the shop in such a way. Yes; though Viéra Pavlovna loved to assure herself that the shop was getting along by itself, yet in reality she knew that she is only flattering herself with this thought, and, as a matter of fact, the shop needed a director, else it would go astray. However, the business was now very well established, and it took but very little trouble to direct it. Mrs. Mertsálova had two children; but she might spare an hour, or an hour and a half, every day, or not even every day. She surely would not refuse, for already she has a great deal to do with the shop. Viéra Pavlovna began to look over her things, preparatory to the sale of them, and she herself sent Masha first to Mrs. Mertsálova, to ask her to come, and then to the old woman[1] who deals in second-hand clothes and other things of every sort, Rachel, one of the most business-like
- ↑ Torgovka.
