as it used to be in the house. In the drawing-room the little white
sofas, with their thin legs, and their shining grey coverings, all
worn and rumpled, vividly recalled to mind the times of Catharine. In
that room also stood the famous arm-chair of the late proprietress, a
chair with a high, straight back, in which, even in her old age, she
used always to sit bolt upright. On the wall hung an old portrait
of Fedor's great-grandfather, Andrei Lavretsky. His dark, sallow
countenance could scarcely be distinguished against the cracked and
darkened background. His small, malicious eyes looked out morosely
from beneath the heavy, apparently swollen eyelids. His black hair,
worn without powder, rose up stiff as a brush above his heavy,
wrinkled forehead. From the corner of the portrait hung a dusky wreath
of _immortelles_. "Glafira Petrovna deigned to weave it herself,"
observed Anthony. In the bed-room stood a narrow bedstead, with
curtains of some striped material, extremely old, but of very good
quality. On the bed lay a heap of faded cushions and a thin, quilted
counterpane; and above the bolster hung a picture of the Presentation
of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple, the very picture which the old
lady, when she lay dying, alone and forgotten, pressed for the last
time with lips which were already beginning to grow cold. Near the
window stood a toilet table, inlaid with different kinds of wood and
ornamented with plates of copper, supporting a crooked mirror in
a frame of which the gilding had turned black. In a line with the
bed-room was the oratory, a little room with bare walls; in the corner
stood a heavy case for holding sacred pictures, and on the floor lay
the scrap of carpet, worn threadbare, and covered with droppings from
wax candles, on which Glafira Petrovna used to prostrate herself when
she prayed.

Anton went out with Lavretsky's servant to open the stable and