“I say, she gave her ten roubles!” someone said in the crowd.
“Let me kiss your hand,” faltered the unknown, holding tight in the fingers of her left hand the corner of the ten-rouble note, which fluttered in the draught. Varvara Petrovna frowned slightly, and with a serious, almost severe, face held out her hand. The cripple kissed it with reverence. Her grateful eyes shone with positive ecstasy. At that moment the governor’s wife came up, and a whole crowd of ladies and high officials flocked after her. The governor’s wife was forced to stand still for a moment in the crush; many people stopped.
“You are trembling. Are you cold?” Varvara Petrovna observed suddenly, and flinging off her pelisse which a footman caught in mid-air, she took from her own shoulders a very expensive black shawl, and with her own hands wrapped it round the bare neck of the still kneeling woman.
“But get up, get up from your knees I beg you!”
The woman got up.
“Where do you live? Is it possible no one knows where she lives?” Varvara Petrovna glanced round impatiently again. But the crowd was different now: she saw only the faces of acquaintances, people in society, surveying the scene, some with severe astonishment, others with sly curiosity and at the same time guileless eagerness for a sensation, while others positively laughed.
“I believe her name’s Lebyadkin,” a good-natured person volunteered at last in answer to Varvara Petrovna. It was our respectable and respected merchant Andreev, a man in spectacles with a grey beard, wearing Russian dress and holding a high round hat in his hands. “They live in the Filipovs’ house in Bogoyavlensky Street.”
“Lebyadkin? Filipovs’ house? I have heard something.… Thank you, Nikon Semyonitch. But who is this Lebyadkin?”
“He calls himself a captain, a man, it must be said, not over careful in his behaviour. And no doubt this is his sister. She must have escaped from under control,” Nikon Semyonitch went on, dropping his voice, and glancing significantly at Varvara Petrovna.
“I understand. Thank you, Nikon Semyonitch. Your name is Mlle. Lebyadkin?”