It can easily be imagined what impression Alexei would produce among the circle of our young ladies. He was the first who appeared before them gloomy and disenchanted, the first who spoke to them of lost happiness and of his blighted youth; in addition to which he wore a mourning ring engraved with a death’s head. All this was something quite new in that distant government. The young ladies simply went, out of their minds about him.
But not one of them felt so much interest in him as the daughter of our Anglomaniac Liza, or Betsy, as Gregory Ivanovitch usually called her. As their parents did not visit each other, she had not yet seen Alexei, even when he had become the sole topic of conversation among all the young ladies of the neighbourhood. She was seventeen years of age. Dark eyes illuminated her swarthy and exceedingly pleasant countenance. She was an only child, and consequently she was perfectly spoiled. Her wantonness and continual pranks delighted her father and filled with despair the heart of Miss Jackson, her governess, an affected old maid of forty, who powdered her face and darkened her eyebrows, read through “Pamela”[2] twice a year, for which she received two thousand roubles, and felt almost bored to death in this barbarous Russia of ours.
Liza was waited upon by Nastia, who, although somewhat older, was quite as giddy as her mistress. Liza was very fond of her, revealed to her all her secrets, and planned pranks together with her; in a word, Nastia was a far more important person in the village of Priloutchina, than the trusted confidante in a French tragedy.
“Will you allow me to go out to-day on a visit?” said Nastia one morning, as she was dressing her mistress.
“Very well; but where are you going to?”
“To Tougilovo, to the Berestoffs. The wife of their cook is going to celebrate her name-day to-day, and she came over yesterday to invite us to dinner.”
“That’s curious,” said Liza: “the masters are at daggers drawn, but the servants fête each other.”
“What have the masters to do with us?” replied Nastia. “Besides, I belong to you, and not to your papa. You have not had any quarrel with young Berestoff; let the old ones quarrel and fight, if it gives them any pleasure.”
“Try and see Alexei Berestoff, Nastia, and then tell me what he looks like and what sort of a person he is.”
Nastia promised to do so, and all day long Liza waited with impatience for her return. In the evening Nastia made her appearance.