Publisher's Synopsis
The brilliant, spring day was inclining toward the evening, tiny rose-tinted cloudlets hung high in the heavens, and seemed not to be floating past, but retreating into the very depths of the azure. In front of the open window of a handsome house, in one of the outlying streets of O * * * the capital of a Government, sat two women; one fifty years of age, the other seventy years old, and already aged. The former was named Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin. Her husband, formerly the governmental procurator, well known in his day as an active official-a man of energetic and decided character, splenetic and stubborn-had died ten years previously. He had received a fairly good education, had studied at the university, but, having been born in a poverty-stricken class of society, he had early comprehended the necessity of opening up a way for himself, and of accumulating money. Marya Dmitrievna had married him for love; he was far from uncomely in appearance, he was clever, and, when he chose, he could be very amiable. Marya Dmitrievna (her maiden name had been Pestoff) had lost her parents in early childhood, had spent several years in Moscow, in a government educational institute, and, on returning thence, had lived fifty versts from O * * *, in her native village, Pokrovskoe, with her aunt and her elder brother. This brother soon removed to Petersburg on service, and kept his sister and his aunt on short commons, until his sudden death put an end to his career."
