es Papa, Avdotia had a spark of affection was
Lubotshka. Indeed, Avdotia always treated her with a kind of grave
admiration and timid deference which greatly surprised me.

From the first Avdotia was very fond of calling herself our stepmother
and hinting that, since children and servants usually adopt an unjust
and hostile attitude towards a woman thus situated, her own position
was likely to prove a difficult one. Yet, though she foresaw all the
unpleasantness of her predicament, she did nothing to escape from it by
(for instance) conciliating this one, giving presents to that other one,
and forbearing to grumble--the last a precaution which it would have
been easy for her to take, seeing that by nature she was in no way
exacting, as well as very good-tempered. Yet, not only did she do none
of these things, but her expectation of difficulties led her to adopt
the defensive before she had been attacked. That is to say, supposing
that the entire household was designing to show her every kind of insult
and annoyance, she would see plots where no plots were, and consider
that her most dignified course was to suffer in silence--an attitude
of passivity as regards winning AFfection which of course led to
DISaffection. Moreover, she was so totally lacking in that faculty
of "apprehension" to which I have already referred as being highly
developed in our household, and all her customs were so utterly opposed
to those which had long been rooted in our establishment, that those two
facts alone were bound to go against her. From the first, her mode of
life in our tidy, methodical household was that of a person only
just arrived there. Sometimes she went to bed late, sometimes early;
sometimes she appeared at luncheon, sometimes she did not; sometimes she
took supper, sometimes she dispensed with it. When we had no guests
with us she more often than not walked about the house in a semi-nude
condition, and was not ashamed to appear before us--even before the
servants--in a white chemise, with only a shawl thrown over her bare
shoulders. At first this Bohemianism pleased me, but before very long
it led to my losing the last shred of respect which I felt for her. What
struck me as even more strange was the fact that, according as we had or
had not guests, she was two different women. The one (the woman figuring
in society) was a young and healthy, but rather cold, beauty, a person
richly dressed, neither stupid nor clever, and unfail