This detachment allowed him to observe the other guests, including the children who were seen around a Christmas tree.
The governess' son retreated into another room and was occupied playing with the rich girl and her doll.
A topic of discussion at the party was that the father of the rich girl had already set aside a dowry of 300,000 rubles for her.
Shortly after, Mastakovich and the parents of the young girl are seen speaking intimately, to the delight of the other guests.
The narrator then hears the crowd discussing that the girl's dowry had been 500,000 rubles, as Mastakovich had previously calculated.