“How is it our Sasha’s not back yet?” he kept asking his wife, glancing out of window. “Why, it’s dinner-time!”
After waiting for the lieutenant till six o’clock, they sat down to dinner. When supper-time came, however, Alexey Ivanovitch was listening to every footstep, to every sound of the door, and kept shrugging his shoulders.
“Strange!” he said. “The rascally dandy must have stayed on at the tenant’s.”
As he went to bed after supper, Kryukov made up his mind that the lieutenant was being entertained at the tenant’s, where after a festive evening he was staying the night.
Alexandr Grigoryevitch only returned next morning. He looked extremely crumpled and confused.
“I want to speak to you alone . . .” he said mysteriously to his cousin.
They went into the study. The lieutenant shut the door, and he paced for a long time up and down before he began to speak.
“Something’s happened, my dear fellow,” he began, “that I don’t know how to tell you about. You wouldn’t believe it . . .”
And blushing, faltering, not looking at his cousin, he told what had happened with the IOUs. Kryukov, standing with his feet wide apart and his head bent, listened and frowned.
“Are you joking?” he asked.