“To their house in the country, sir. Forgive me, my dear sir, if I am too agitated, and confuse my words; but I am so dreadfully afraid of hearing you refuse me.” He looked at Velchaninoff plaintively. “You wish me to accompany you to see your bride?” said Velchaninoff, staring keenly at Pavel Pavlovitch; he could not believe either his eyes or his ears. “Yes—yes, sir!” murmured Pavel, who had suddenly become timid to a painful degree. “Don’t be angry, Alexey Ivanovitch, it is not my audacity that prompts me to ask you this; I do it with all humility, and conscious of the unusual nature of my petition. I—I thought perhaps you would not refuse my humble request.” “In the first place, the thing is absolutely out of the question,” said Velchaninoff, turning away in considerable mental perturbation. “It is only my immeasurable longing that prompts me to ask you. I confess I have a reason for desiring it, which reason I propose to reveal to you afterwards; just now I——” “The thing is quite impossible, however you may look at it. You must admit yourself that it is so!” cried Velchaninoff. Both men had risen from their chairs in the excitement of the conversation. “Not at all—not at all; it is quite possible, sir. In the first place, I merely propose to introduce you as my friend; and in the second place, you know the family already, the Zachlebnikoff’s—State Councillor Zachlebnikoff!” “What? how so?” cried Velchaninoff. This was the very man whom he had so often tried to find at home, and whom he never succeeded in hunting down—the very lawyer who had acted for his adversary in the late legal proceedings. “Why, certainly—certainly!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, apparently taking heart at Velchaninoff’s extreme display of amazement. “The very same man whom I saw you talking to in the street one day; when I watched you from the other side of the road, I was waiting my turn to speak to him then. We served in the same department twelve years since. I had no thought of all this that day I saw you with him; the whole idea is quite new and sudden—only a week old.” “But—excuse me; why, surely this is a most respectable family, isn’t it?” asked Velchaninoff, naïvely. “Well, and what if it is respectable?” said Pavel, with a twist. “Oh, no—of course, I meant nothing; but, so far as I could judge from what I saw, there——” “They remember—they remember your coming down,” cried Pavel delightedly. “I told them all sorts of flattering things about you.” “But, look here, how are you to marry within three months of your late wife’s death?”