Her movements were free and graceful.

Mariana's position in the Sipiagin's house was a very difficult
one. Her father, a brilliant man of Polish extraction, who had
attained the rank of general, was discovered to have embezzled
large state funds. He was tried and convicted, deprived of his
rank, nobility, and exiled to Siberia. After some time he was
pardoned and returned, but was too utterly crushed to begin life
anew, and died in extreme poverty. His wife, Sipiagin's sister,
did not survive the shock of the disgrace and her husband's
death, and died soon after. Uncle Sipiagin gave a home to their
only child, Mariana. She loathed her life of dependence and
longed for freedom with all the force of her upright soul. There
was a constant inner battle between her and her aunt. Valentina
Mihailovna looked upon her as a nihilist and freethinker, and
Mariana detested her aunt as an unconscious tyrant. She held
aloof from her uncle and, indeed, from everyone else in the
house. She held aloof, but was not afraid of them. She was not
timid by nature.

"Antipathy is a strange thing," Kollomietzev repeated. "Everybody
knows that I am a deeply religious man, orthodox in the fullest
sense of the word, but the sight of a priest's flowing locks
drives me nearly mad. It makes me boil over with rage."

"I believe hair in general has an irritating effect upon you,
Simion Petrovitch," Mariana remarked. "I feel sure you can't bear
to see it cut short like mine."

Valentina Mihailovna lifted her eyebrows slowly, then dropped her