with a gable, painted a pink colour, stood in the middle of the
garden, and seemed to be peeping out innocently from behind the green
trees. Zoya was the first to open the gate; she ran into the garden,
crying: 'I have brought the wanderers!' A young girl, with a pale
and expressive face, rose from a garden bench near the little path,
and in the doorway of the house appeared a lady in a lilac silk dress,
holding an embroidered cambric handkerchief over her head to screen it
from the sun, and smiling with a weary and listless air.




III


Anna Vassilyevna Stahov--her maiden name was Shubin--had been left, at
seven years old, an orphan and heiress of a pretty considerable
property. She had very rich and also very poor relations; the poor
relations were on her father's, the rich on her mother's side; the
latter including the senator Volgin and the Princes Tchikurasov.
Prince Ardalion Tchikurasov, who had been appointed her guardian,
placed her in the best Moscow boarding-school, and when she left
school, took her into his own home. He kept open house, and gave balls
in the winter. Anna Vassilyevna's future husband, Nikolai Artemyevitch
Stahov, captured her heart at one of these balls when she was arrayed
in a charming rose-coloured gown, with a wreath of tiny roses. She had
treasured that wreath all her life. Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov was
the son of a retired captain, who had been wounded in 1812, and had
received a lucrative post in Petersburg. Nikolai Artemyevitch entered
the School of Cadets at sixteen, and left to go into the Guards. He