ady of quality? The Countess
A---- had by no means a bad heart, but she was capricious, like a
woman who had been spoiled by the world, as well as being avaricious
and egotistical, like all old people, who have seen their best days,
and whose thoughts are with the past, and not the present. She
participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls,
where she sat in a corner, painted and dressed in old-fashioned style,
like a deformed but indispensable ornament of the ballroom; all the
guests on entering approached her and made a profound bow, as if in
accordance with a set ceremony, but after that nobody took any further
notice of her. She received the whole town at her house, and observed
the strictest etiquette, although she could no longer recognize the
faces of people. Her numerous domestics, growing fat and old in her
antechamber and servants' hall, did just as they liked, and vied with
each other in robbing the aged Countess in the most bare-faced manner.
Lizaveta Ivanovna was the martyr of the household. She made tea, and
was reproached with using too much sugar; she read novels aloud to the
Countess, and the faults of the author were visited upon her head; she
accompanied the Countess in her walks, and was held answerable for the
weather or the state of the pavement. A salary was attached to the
post, but she very rarely received it, although she was expected to
dress like everybody else, that is to say, like very few indeed. In
society she played the most pitiable role. Everybody knew her, and
nobody paid her any attention. At balls she danced only when a partner
was wanted, and ladies would only take hold of her arm when it was
necessary to lead her out of the room to attend to their dresses. She
was very self-conscious, and felt her position keenly, and she looked
about her with impatience for a deliverer to come to her rescue; but
the young men, calculating in their giddiness, honored her with but
very little attention, although Lizaveta Ivanovna was a hundred times
prettier than the bare-faced, cold-hearted marriageable girls around
whom they hovered. Many a time did she quietly slink away from the
glittering, but wearisome, drawing-room, to go and cry in her own poor
little room, in which stood a screen, a chest of drawers, a
looking-glass, and a painted bedstead, and where a tallow candle burnt
feebly in a copper candle-stick.

One morning--this was about two days after the evening party desc