inks more than ever. I am thinking of going to the Marshal of
Nobility to lodge a complaint. Would you believe it, he has more
than once broken open the trunks and . . . taken Manetchka's trousseau
and given it to beggars. He has taken everything out of two of the
trunks! If he goes on like this, my Manetchka will be left without
a trousseau at all."

"What are you saying, _mamam_?" said Manetchka, embarrassed. "Our
visitor might suppose . . . there's no knowing what he might suppose
. . . . I shall never--never marry."

Manetchka cast her eyes up to the ceiling with a look of hope and
aspiration, evidently not for a moment believing what she said.

A little bald-headed masculine figure in a brown coat and goloshes
instead of boots darted like a mouse across the passage and
disappeared. "Yegor Semyonitch, I suppose," I thought.

I looked at the mother and daughter together. They both looked much
older and terribly changed. The mother's hair was silvered, but the
daughter was so faded and withered that her mother might have been
taken for her elder sister, not more than five years her senior.

"I have made up my mind to go to the Marshal," the mother said to
me, forgetting she had told me this already. "I mean to make a
complaint. Yegor Semyonitch lays his hands on everything we make,
and offers it up for the sake of his soul. My Manetchka is left
without a trousseau."

Manetchka flushed again, but this time she said nothing.

"We have to make them all over again. And God knows we are not so
well off. We are all alone in the world now."

"We are alone in the world," repeated Manetchka.

A year ago fate brought me once more to the little house.

Walking into the drawing-room, I saw the old lady. Dressed all in
black with heavy crape _pleureuses_, she was sitting on the sofa
sewing. Beside her sat the little old man in the brown coat and the
goloshes instead of boots. On seeing me, he jumped up and ran out
of the room.

In response to my greeting, the old lady smiled and said:

_"Je suis charmee de vous revoir, monsieur."_

"What are you making?" I asked, a little later.

"It's a blouse. When it's finished I shall take it to the priest's
to be put away, or else Yegor Semyonitch would carry it off. I store
everything at the priest's now," she added in a whisper.

And looking at the portrait of her daughter which stood before her
on the table, she sighed and said:

"We are all alone in the world."

And