"Then you have paid the fifty marks?" asked Schmidt, whose curiosity was roused instead of satisfied.
"No. I shall pay the money to-morrow. I have promised to do so. As it chances, it will be convenient." The Count smiled to himself in a meaning way, as though already enjoying the triumph of laying the gold pieces upon the counter under Akulina's flat nose.
"And yet Fischelowitz has already given it to you! He must be very sure of you—" With his usual lack of tact, Schmidt had gone further than he meant to do, but the transaction savoured of the marvellous.
"To be strictly truthful," said the Count, who had a Quixotic fear of misleading in the smallest degree any one to whom he was speaking, "to be exactly honest, there is a circumstance which makes it less remarkable that Fischelowitz should have given me the doll at once."
"Of course, of course!" exclaimed the Cossack, anxious to appear credulous out of kindness. "Fischelowitz knows as well as you do yourself how safe you are to get the money to-morrow."
"Naturally," replied the Count, with great calmness. "But besides that, the Gigerl is broken—badly broken in the middle, and the musical box is spoiled too."
"Fischelowitz must have been very angry," observed Dumnoff.
"Not at all. It was his wife. Akulina knocked it from the counter into the farthest corner of the shop."
"Tell us all about it," said Schmidt, more interested than ever.
"Ah, that—that is quite another matter," answered the Count, reddening perceptibly as he remembered Akulina's furious abuse.