Chapter 23

THE NECHLUDOFFS

From the first, the member of this company who struck me the most
was Lubov Sergievna, who, holding a lapdog in her arms and
wearing stout laced boots, was the last of the four ladies to
ascend the staircase, and twice stopped to gaze at me intently
and then kiss her little dog. She was anything but good-looking,
since she was red-haired, thin, short, and slightly crooked. What
made her plain face all the plainer was the queer way in which
her hair was parted to one side (it looked like the wigs which
bald women contrive for themselves). However much I should have
liked to applaud my friend, I could not find a single comely
feature in her. Even her brown eyes, though expressive of good-
humour, were small and dull--were, in fact, anything but pretty;
while her hands (those most characteristic of features), were
though neither large nor ill-shaped, coarse and red.

As soon as we reached the verandah, each of the ladies, except
Dimitri's sister Varenika--who also had been regarding me
attentively out of her large, dark-grey eyes--said a few words
to me before resuming her occupation, while Varenika herself began
to read aloud from a book which she held on her lap and steadied
with her finger.

The Princess Maria Ivanovna was a tall, well-built woman of
forty. To judge by the curls of half-grey hair which descended
below her cap one might have taken her for more, but as soon as
ever one observed the fresh, extraordinarily tender, and almost
wrinkleless face, as well as, most of all, the lively, cheerful
sparkle of the large eyes, one involuntarily took her for less.
Her eyes were black and very frank, her lips thin and slightly
severe, her nose regular and slightly inclined to the left, and
her hands ringless, large, and almost like those of a man, but
with finely tapering fingers. She wore a dark-blue dress fastened
to the throat and sitting closely to her firm, still youthful
waist--a waist which she evidently pinched. Lastly, she held
herself very upright, and was knitting a garment of some kind. As
soon as I stepped on to the verandah she took me by the hand,
drew me to her as though wishing to scrutinise me more closely,
and said, as she gazed at me with the same cold, candid glance as
her son's, that she had long known me by report from Dimitri, and
that therefore, in order to make my acquaintance thoroughly, she
had invited me to stay these twenty-four hours in her house.

"Do just as you please here," she said, "and stand on no ceremony
whatever with us, even as we shall stand on none with you. Pray
walk, read, listen, or sleep as the mood may take you."

Sophia Ivanovna was an old maid and the Princess's younger
sister,