"Well, Gavríla,"--she suddenly remarked:--"shall not we marry him? What dost thou think about it? Perhaps that will steady him."
"Why should n't we marry him, ma'am? It can be done, ma'am,"--replied Gavríla;--"and it would even be a very good thing."
"Of course, ma'am. However, as you like, ma'am. He can always be put to some use, so to speak; you would n't reject him out of any ten men."
Gavríla was about to make some reply, but compressed his lips.
"Yes!.... let him woo Tatyána,"--the mistress announced her decision, as she took a pinch of snuff with satisfaction:--"dost hear me?"
"I obey, ma'am,"--enunciated Gavríla, and withdrew.
On returning to his chamber (it was situated in a wing, and was almost completely filled with wrought-iron coffers), Gavríla first sent away his wife, and then seated himself by the window, and became engrossed in meditation. The mistress's sudden command had evidently dazed him. At last he rose, and ordered Kapíton to be called. Kapíton presented himself.... But before we repeat their conversation to the reader, we consider it not superfluous to state, in a few words, who this Tatyána was, whom Kapíton was to marry, and why his mistress's command had disconcerted the major-domo.
Tatyána, who, as we have said above, served as laundress (but, in her quality of expert and well-trained laundress, she was given only the delicate linen), was a woman of eight-and-twenty, small, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles on the left cheek are regarded as a bad sign in Russia--as the presage of an unhappy life.... Tatyána could not boast of her luck. From early youth she had been ill-treated; she had worked for two, and had never received any caresses; she was badly clothed; she received the very smallest of wages; she had practically no relatives; an old butler in the village who had been discharged for uselessness was her uncle, and her other uncles were common peasants,--that is all. At one time she had been a beauty, but her beauty soon left her. She was of extremely meek, or, to put it more accurately, frightened disposition, felt the most complete indifference for herself, and was deadly afraid of other people. Her sole thought was as to how she might finish her work by the appointed time. She never talked with any one, and she trembled at the mere mention of the mistress's name, although she hardly knew her by sight.