old, the other an old woman of seventy.

The name of the first was Maria Dmitrievna Kalitine. Her husband, who
had formerly occupied the post of Provincial Procurator, and who was
well known in his day as a good man of business--a man of bilious
temperament, confident, resolute, and enterprising--had been dead
ten years. He had received a good education, and had studied at the
university, but as the family from which he sprang was a poor one, he
had early recognized the necessity of making a career for himself and
of gaining money.

Maria Dmitrievna married him for love. He was good-looking, he had
plenty of sense, and, when he liked, he could be very agreeable. Maria
Dmitrievna, whose maiden name was Pestof, lost her parents while she
was still a child. She spent several years in an Institute at Moscow,
and then went to live with her brother and one of her aunts at
Pokrovskoe, a family estate situated fifteen versts from O. Soon
afterwards her brother was called away on duty to St. Petersburgh, and,
until a sudden death put an end to his career, he kept his aunt and
sister with only just enough for them to live upon. Maria Dmitrievna
inherited Pokrovskoe, but she did not long reside there. In the second
year of her marriage with Kalitine, who had succeeded at the end of
a few days in gaining her affections, Pokrovskoe was exchanged for
another estate--one of much greater intrinsic value, but unattractive
in appearance, and not provided with a mansion. At the same time
Kalitine purchased a house in the town of O., and there he and his
wife permanently established themselves. A large garden was attached
to it, extending in one direction to the fields outside the town, "so
that," Kalitine, who was by no means an admirer of rural tranquillity,
used to say, "there is no reason why we should go dragging ourselves
off into the country." Maria Dmitrievna often secretly regretted her
beautiful Pokrovskoe, with its joyous brook, its sweeping meadows, and
its verdant woods, but she never opposed her husband in any thing,
having the highest respect for his judgment and his knowledge of the
world. And when he died, after fifteen years of married life, leaving
behind him a son and two daughters, Maria Dmitrievna had grown
so accustomed to her house and to a town life, that she had no
inclination to change her residence.

In her youth Maria Dmitrievna had enjoyed the reputation of being a
pretty blonde, and even in her fiftieth ye