From the first, the member of this company who struck me the most was Lubov Sergievna, who, holding a lapdog in her arms and wearing stout¹ laced boots, was the last of the four ladies to ascend² the staircase, and twice stopped to gaze at me intently and then kiss her little dog. She was anything but good-looking, since she was red-haired, thin, short, and slightly crooked³. What made her plain face all the plainer was the queer way in which her hair was parted to one side (it looked like the wigs⁴ which bald women contrive⁵ for themselves). However much I should have liked to applaud my friend, I could not find a single comely⁶ feature in her. Even her brown eyes, though expressive⁷ of good- humour, were small and dull — were, in fact, anything but pretty; while her hands (those most characteristic of features), were though neither large nor ill-shaped, coarse and red.

As soon as we reached the verandah, each of the ladies, except Dimitri’s sister Varenika — who also had been regarding me attentively⁸ out of her large, dark-grey eyes — said a few words to me before resuming her occupation, while Varenika herself began to read aloud from a book which she held on her lap and steadied with her finger.

The Princess Maria Ivanovna was a tall, well-built woman of forty. To judge by the curls of half-grey hair which descended⁹ below her cap one might have taken her for more, but as soon as ever one observed the fresh, extraordinarily¹⁰ tender, and almost wrinkleless face, as well as, most of all, the lively, cheerful sparkle of the large eyes, one involuntarily took her for less. Her eyes were black and very frank, her lips thin and slightly severe, her nose regular and slightly inclined to the left, and her hands ringless, large, and almost like those of a man, but with finely

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