who are not
rich, just as persons of a servile nature succeed in discovering
"good family" at the first glance in people of the most ordinary
exterior, if they are a little more distinguished than themselves.
Nadyezhda Lvovna's inner life was only known to me by scandal. It
was said in the district that five or six years ago, before she was
married, during her father's lifetime, she had been passionately
in love with Prince Sergey Ivanitch, who was now beside me in the
chaise. The prince had been fond of visiting her father, and used
to spend whole days in his billiard room, where he played pyramids
indefatigably till his arms and legs ached. Six months before the
old man's death he had suddenly given up visiting the Shabelskys.
The gossip of the district having no positive facts to go upon
explained this abrupt change in their relations in various ways.
Some said that the prince, having observed the plain daughter's
feeling for him and being unable to reciprocate it, considered it
the duty of a gentleman to cut short his visits. Others maintained
that old Shabelsky had discovered why his daughter was pining away,
and had proposed to the poverty-stricken prince that he should marry
her; the prince, imagining in his narrow-minded way that they were
trying to buy him together with his title, was indignant, said
foolish things, and quarrelled with them. What was true and what
was false in this nonsense was difficult to say. But that there was
a portion of truth in it was evident, from the fact that the prince
always avoided conversation about Nadyezhda Lvovna.

I knew that soon after her father's death Nadyezhda Lvovna had
married one Kandurin, a bachelor of law, not wealthy, but adroit,
who had come on a visit to the neighbourhood. She married him not
from love, but because she was touched by the love of the legal
gentleman who, so it was said, had cleverly played the love-sick
swain. At the time I am describing, Kandurin was for some reason
living in Cairo, and writing thence to his friend, the marshal of
the district, "Notes of Travel," while she sat languishing behind
lowered blinds, surrounded by idle parasites, and whiled away her
dreary days in petty philanthropy.

On the way to the house the prince fell to talking.

"It's three days since I have been at home," he said in a half
whisper, with a sidelong glance at the driver. "I am not a child,
nor a silly woman, and I have no prejudices, but I can't stand the
b