ation for
fifteen years in Petersburg and Moscow, finished by ruining himself
completely at cards, and was forced to retire to the country, where,
however, he soon after died, leaving a very small property to his two
daughters--Anna, a girl of twenty, and Katya, a child of twelve. Their
mother, who came of an impoverished line of princes--the H----s-- had
died at Petersburg when her husband was in his heydey. Anna's position
after her father's death was very difficult. The brilliant education
she had received in Petersburg had not fitted her for putting up with
the cares of domestic life and economy,--for an obscure existence in
the country. She knew positively no one in the whole neighbourhood, and
there was no one she could consult. Her father had tried to avoid all
contact with the neighbours; he despised them in his way, and they
despised him in theirs. She did not lose her head, however, and
promptly sent for a sister of her mother's Princess Avdotya Stepanovna
H----, a spiteful and arrogant old lady, who, on installing herself in
her niece's house, appropriated all the best rooms for her own use,
scolded and grumbled from morning till night, and would not go a walk
even in the garden unattended by her one serf, a surly footman in a
threadbare pea-green livery with light blue trimming and a
three-cornered hat. Anna put up patiently with all her aunt's whims,
gradually set to work on her sister's education, and was, it seemed,
already getting reconciled to the idea of wasting her life in the
wilds.... But destiny had decreed another fate for her. She chanced to
be seen by Odintsov, a very wealthy man of forty-six, an eccentric
hypochondriac, stout, heavy, and sour, but not stupid, and not
ill-natured; he fell in love with her, and offered her his hand. She
consented to become his wife, and he lived six years with her, and on
his death settled all his property upon her. Anna Sergyevna remained in
the country for nearly a year after his death; then she went abroad
with her sister, but only stopped in Germany; she got tired of it, and
came back to live at her favourite Nikolskoe, which was nearly thirty
miles from the town of X----. There she had a magnificent, splendidly
furnished house and a beautiful garden, with conservatories; her late
husband had spared no expense to gratify his fancies. Anna Sergyevna
went very rarely to the town, generally only on business, and even then
she did not stay long. She was not liked