“Oh, well, that's your own affair again and yet, if so, what in the devil's name could you want with Bagantoff alive?”
“Oh, my dear sir, I should have liked just to have a nice peep at a dear old friend, that's all. We should have got hold of a bottle of wine, and drunk it together!”
“He wouldn't have drunk with you!”
“Why not? Noblesse oblige? Why, you are drinking with me. Wherein is he better than you?”
“I have not drunk with you.”
“Wherefore this sudden pride, sir?”
Velchaninoff suddenly burst into a fit of nervous, irritable laughter.
“Why, deuce take it all!” he cried, “you are quite a different type to what I believed. I thought you were nothing but a ‘permanent husband,’ but I find you are a sort of bird of prey.”
“What! ‘permanent husband?’ What is a ‘permanent husband?’ ” asked Pavel Pavlovitch, pricking up his ears.
“Oh—just one type of husbands—that's all, it's too long to explain. Come, you'd better get out now; it's quite time you went. I'm sick of you!”