I can see." He embraced the prince, and kissed him.

"What do you mean, though," asked Muishkin, "'by such a business'? I
don't see any particular 'business' about it at all!"

"Oh, undoubtedly, this person wished somehow, and for some reason, to
do Evgenie Pavlovitch a bad turn, by attributing to him--before
witnesses--qualities which he neither has nor can have," replied Prince
S. drily enough.

Muiskhin looked disturbed, but continued to gaze intently and
questioningly into Prince S.'s face. The latter, however, remained
silent.

"Then it was not simply a matter of bills?" Muishkin said at last, with
some impatience. "It was not as she said?"

"But I ask you, my dear sir, how can there be anything in common between
Evgenie Pavlovitch, and--her, and again Rogojin? I tell you he is a man
of immense wealth--as I know for a fact; and he has further expectations
from his uncle. Simply Nastasia Philipovna--"

Prince S. paused, as though unwilling to continue talking about Nastasia
Philipovna.

"Then at all events he knows her!" remarked the prince, after a moment's
silence.

"Oh, that may be. He may have known her some time ago--two or three
years, at least. He used to know Totski. But it is impossible that
there should be any intimacy between them. She has not even been in the
place--many people don't even know that she has returned from Moscow! I
have only observed her carriage about for the last three days or so."

"It's a lovely carriage," said Adelaida.

"Yes, it was a beautiful turn-out, certainly!"

The visitors left the house, however, on no less friendly terms than
before. But the visit was of the greatest importance to the prince, from
his own point of view. Admitting that he had his suspicions, from
the moment of the occurrence of last night, perhaps even before, that
Nastasia had some mysterious end in view, yet this visit confirmed his
suspicions and justified his fears. It was all clear to him; Prince S.
was wrong, perhaps, in his view of the matter, but he was somewhere near
the truth, and was right in so far as that he understood there to be
an intrigue of some sort going on. Perhaps Prince S. saw it all more
clearly than he had allowed his hearers to understand. At all events,
nothing could be plainer than that he and Adelaida had come for the
express purpose of obtaining explanations, and that they suspected him
of being concerned in the affair. And if all this were so, then SHE must
have so