‘Wasn’t he lying then, do you imagine?’
‘No, my son, he wasn’t lying. But, do you know, we’ve talked enough of this. Let’s light our pipes and call Alexandra Pavlovna in here. It’s easier to talk when she’s with us and easier to be silent. She shall make us some tea.’
‘Very well,’ replied Volintsev. ‘Sasha, come in,’ he cried aloud.
Alexandra Pavlovna came in. He grasped her hand and pressed it warmly to his lips.
Rudin returned in a curious and mingled frame of mind. He was annoyed with himself, he reproached himself for his unpardonable precipitancy, his boyish impulsiveness. Some one has justly said: there is nothing more painful than the consciousness of having just done something stupid.
Rudin was devoured by regret.
‘What evil genius drove me,’ he muttered between his teeth, ‘to call on that squire! What an idea it was! Only to expose myself to insolence!’
But in Darya Mihailovna’s house something extraordinary had been happening. The lady herself did not appear the whole morning, and did not come in to dinner; she had a headache, declared Pandalevsky, the only person who had been admitted to her room. Natalya, too, Rudin scarcely got a glimpse of: she sat in her room with Mlle. Boncourt. When she met him at the dinner-table she looked at him so mournfully that his heart sank. Her face was changed as though a load of sorrow had descended upon her since the day before. Rudin began to be oppressed by a vague presentiment of trouble. In order to distract his mind in some way he occupied himself with Bassistoff, had much conversation with him, and found him an ardent, eager lad, full of enthusiastic hopes and still untarnished faith. In the evening Darya Mihailovna appeared for a couple of hours in the drawing-room. She was polite to Rudin, but kept him somehow at a distance, and smiled and frowned, talking through her nose, and in hints more than ever. Everything about her had the air of the society lady of the court. She had seemed of late rather cooler to Rudin. ‘What is the secret of it?’ he thought, with a sidelong look at her haughtily-lifted head.
He had not long to wait for the solution of the enigma. As he was returning at twelve o’clock at night to his room, along a dark corridor, some one suddenly thrust a note into his hand. He looked round; a girl was hurrying away in the distance, Natalya’s maid, he fancied. He went into his room, dismissed the servant, tore open the letter, and read the following lines in Natalya’s handwriting:—
‘Come to-morrow at seven o’clock in the morning, not later, to Avduhin pond, beyond the oak copse. Any other time will be impossible. It will be our last meeting, all will be over, unless... Come. We must make our decision.—P.S. If I don’t come, it will mean we shall not see each other again; then I will let you know.’