“Of course I looked there—of course I did! Very much so! I looked and scrambled about, and felt for it, and wouldn’t believe it was not there, and looked again and again. It is always so in such cases. One longs and expects to find a lost article; one sees it is not there, and the place is as bare as one’s palm; and yet one returns and looks again and again, fifteen or twenty times, likely enough!”
“Oh, quite so, of course. But how was it in your case?—I don’t quite understand,” said the bewildered prince. “You say it wasn’t there at first, and that you searched the place thoroughly, and yet it turned up on that very spot!”
“Yes, sir—on that very spot.”
The prince gazed strangely at Lebedeff.
“And the general?” he asked, abruptly.
“The—the general? How do you mean, the general?” said Lebedeff, dubiously, as though he had not taken in the drift of the prince’s remark.
“Oh, good heavens! I mean, what did the general say when the purse turned up under the chair? You and he had searched for it together there, hadn’t you?”
“Quite so—together! But the second time I thought better to say nothing about finding it. I found it alone.”
“But—why in the world—and the money? Was it all there?”
“I opened the purse and counted it myself; right to a single rouble.”
“I think you might have come and told me,” said the prince, thoughtfully.