Best Russian Short Stories | Page 9

received it, although she was expected to dress like everybody else, that
is to say, like very few indeed. In society she played the most pitiable
role. Everybody knew her, and nobody paid her any attention. At balls
she danced only when a partner was wanted, and ladies would only take
hold of her arm when it was necessary to lead her out of the room to
attend to their dresses. She was very self-conscious, and felt her
position keenly, and she looked about her with impatience for a
deliverer to come to her rescue; but the young men, calculating in their
giddiness, honoured her with but very little attention, although Lizaveta
Ivanovna was a hundred times prettier than the bare-faced and
cold-hearted marriageable girls around whom they hovered. Many a
time did she quietly slink away from the glittering but wearisome
drawing-room, to go and cry in her own poor little room, in which
stood a screen, a chest of drawers, a looking-glass and a painted
bedstead, and where a tallow candle burnt feebly in a copper
candle-stick.
One morning--this was about two days after the evening party
described at the beginning of this story, and a week previous to the
scene at which we have just assisted--Lizaveta Ivanovna was seated
near the window at her embroidery frame, when, happening to look out
into the street, she caught sight of a young Engineer officer, standing
motionless with his eyes fixed upon her window. She lowered her head
and went on again with her work. About five minutes afterwards she
looked out again--the young officer was still standing in the same place.
Not being in the habit of coquetting with passing officers, she did not
continue to gaze out into the street, but went on sewing for a couple of
hours, without raising her head. Dinner was announced. She rose up

and began to put her embroidery away, but glancing casually out of the
window, she perceived the officer again. This seemed to her very
strange. After dinner she went to the window with a certain feeling of
uneasiness, but the officer was no longer there--and she thought no
more about him.
A couple of days afterwards, just as she was stepping into the carriage
with the Countess, she saw him again. He was standing close behind
the door, with his face half-concealed by his fur collar, but his dark
eyes sparkled beneath his cap. Lizaveta felt alarmed, though she knew
not why, and she trembled as she seated herself in the carriage.
On returning home, she hastened to the window--the officer was
standing in his accustomed place, with his eyes fixed upon her. She
drew back, a prey to curiosity and agitated by a feeling which was quite
new to her.
From that time forward not a day passed without the young officer
making his appearance under the window at the customary hour, and
between him and her there was established a sort of mute acquaintance.
Sitting in her place at work, she used to feel his approach; and raising
her head, she would look at him longer and longer each day. The young
man seemed to be very grateful to her: she saw with the sharp eye of
youth, how a sudden flush covered his pale cheeks each time that their
glances met. After about a week she commenced to smile at him...
When Tomsky asked permission of his grandmother the Countess to
present one of his friends to her, the young girl's heart beat violently.
But hearing that Narumov was not an Engineer, she regretted that by
her thoughtless question, she had betrayed her secret to the volatile
Tomsky.
Hermann was the son of a German who had become a naturalised
Russian, and from whom he had inherited a small capital. Being firmly
convinced of the necessity of preserving his independence, Hermann
did not touch his private income, but lived on his pay, without allowing
himself the slightest luxury. Moreover, he was reserved and ambitious,
and his companions rarely had an opportunity of making merry at the

expense of his extreme parsimony. He had strong passions and an
ardent imagination, but his firmness of disposition preserved him from
the ordinary errors of young men. Thus, though a gamester at heart, he
never touched a card, for he considered his position did not allow
him--as he said--"to risk the necessary in the hope of winning the
superfluous," yet he would sit for nights together at the card table and
follow with feverish anxiety the different turns of the game.
The story of the three cards had produced a powerful impression upon
his imagination, and all night long he could think of nothing else. "If,"
he thought to himself the following evening, as he walked along the
streets of St. Petersburg,