“Nonsense!” I said.  “Only last week I was shooting here!”

“Very possible!” Grontovsky sniggered through his teeth.  “As a matter of fact everyone shoots here regardless of the prohibition.  But once I have met you, it is my duty . . . my sacred duty to warn you.  I am a man in a dependent position.  If the forest were mine, on the word of honour of a Grontovsky, I should not oppose your agreeable pleasure.  But whose fault is it that I am in a dependent position?”

The lanky individual sighed and shrugged his shoulders.  I began arguing, getting hot and protesting, but the more loudly and impressively I spoke the more mawkish and sugary Grontovsky’s face became.  Evidently the consciousness of a certain power over us afforded him the greatest gratification.  He was enjoying his condescending tone, his politeness, his manners, and with peculiar relish pronounced his sonorous surname, of which he was probably very fond.  Standing before us he felt more than at ease, but judging from the confused sideway glances he cast from time to time at his basket, only one thing was spoiling his satisfaction—­the mushrooms, womanish, peasantish, prose, derogatory to his dignity.

“We can’t go back!” I said.  “We have come over ten miles!”

“What’s to be done?” sighed Grontovsky.  “If you had come not ten but a hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America or from some other distant land, even then I should think it my duty . . . sacred, so to say, obligation . . .”

“Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?” asked the prince.

“Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna . . .”

“Is she at home now?”

“Yes . . .  I tell you what, you go to her, it is not more than half a mile from here; if she gives you a note, then I. . . .  I needn’t say!  Ha—­ha . . . he—­he—!”

“By all means,” I agreed.  “It’s much nearer than to go back. . . .  You go to her, Sergey Ivanitch,” I said, addressing the prince.  “You know her.”

The prince, who had been gazing the whole time at the crushed agaric, raised his eyes to me, thought a minute, and said: 

“I used to know her at one time, but . . . it’s rather awkward for me to go to her.  Besides, I am in shabby clothes. . . .  You go, you don’t know her. . . .  It’s more suitable for you to go.”

I agreed.  We got into our chaise and, followed by Grontovsky’s smiles, drove along the edge of the forest to the manor house.  I was not acquainted with Nadyezhda Lvovna Kandurin, nee Shabelsky.  I had never seen her at close quarters, and knew her only by hearsay.  I knew that she was incredibly wealthy, richer than anyone else in the province.  After the death of her father, Shabelsky, who was a landowner with no other children, she was left with several estates, a stud farm, and a lot of money.  I had heard that, though she was only twenty-five or twenty-six, she was ugly, uninteresting, and as insignificant as anybody, and was only distinguished from the ordinary ladies of the district by her immense wealth.