“I wonder where our host has got to?” he repeated. “He has been out of sorts lately. Heaven forbid that he should be in love!”
Mashurina scowled.
“He has gone to the library for books. As for falling in love, he has neither the time nor the opportunity.”
“Why not with you?” almost escaped Paklin’s lips.
“I should like to see him, because I have an important matter to talk over with him,” he said aloud.
“What about?” Ostrodumov asked. “Our affairs?”
“Perhaps yours; that is, our common affairs.”
Ostrodumov hummed. He did not believe him. “Who knows? He’s such a busy body,” he thought.
“There he is at last!” Mashurina exclaimed suddenly, and her small unattractive eyes, fixed on the door, brightened, as if lit up by an inner ray, making them soft and warm and tender.
The door opened, and this time a young man of twenty-three, with a cap on his head and a bundle of books under his arm, entered the room. It was Nejdanov himself.