Gavrila, "and it would be a very good thing, to be sure, 'm."

"Yes; only who is to marry him?"

"Ay, 'm. But that's at your pleasure, 'm. He may, any way, so to say, be
wanted for something; he can't be turned adrift altogether."

"I fancy he likes Tatiana."

Gavrila was on the point of making some reply, but he shut his lips
tightly.

"Yes! . . . let him marry Tatiana," the lady decided, taking a pinch of
snuff complacently, "Do you hear?"

"Yes, 'm," Gavrila articulated, and he withdrew.

Returning to his own room (it was in a little lodge, and was almost
filled up with metal-bound trunks), Gavrila first sent his wife away,
and then sat down at the window and pondered. His mistress's unexpected
arrangement had clearly put him in a difficulty. At last he got up and
sent to call Kapiton. Kapiton made his appearance. . . But before
reporting their conversation to the reader, we consider it not out of
place to relate in few words who was this Tatiana, whom it was to be
Kapiton's lot to marry, and why the great lady's order had disturbed the
steward.

Tatiana, one of the laundresses referred to above (as a trained and
skilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), was a woman
of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles