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 described
at the beginning of this story, and a week previous to the scene at
which we have just assisted--Lizaveta Ivanovna was seated near the
window at her embroidery frame, when, happening to look out into the
street, she caught sight of a young Engineer officer, standing
motionless with his eyes fixed upon her window. She lowered her head,
and went on again with her work. About five minutes afterwards she
looked out again--the young officer was still standing in the same
place. Not being in the habit of coquetting with passing officers, she
did not continue to gaze out into the street, but went on sewing for a
couple of hours, without raising her head. Dinner was announced. She
rose up and began to put her embroidery away, but glancing casually
out of the window, she perceived the officer again. This seemed to her
very strange. After dinner she went to the window with a certain