My mother did not like Harlov’s elder daughter; she called her a
stuck-up thing. Anna Martinovna scarcely ever came to pay us her
respects, and behaved with chilly decorum in my mother’s presence,
though it was by her good offices she had been well educated at a
boarding-school, and had been married, and on her wedding-day had
received a thousand roubles and a yellow Turkish shawl, the latter,
it is true, a trifle the worse for wear. She was a woman of medium
height, thin, very brisk and rapid in her movements, with thick fair
hair and a handsome dark face, on which the pale-blue narrow eyes
showed up in a rather strange but pleasing way. She had a straight
thin nose, her lips were thin too, and her chin was like the loop-end
of a hair-pin. No one looking at her could fail to think: ‘Well, you
are a clever creature--and a spiteful one, too!’ And for all that,
there was something attractive about her too. Even the dark moles,
scattered ‘like buck-wheat’ over her face, suited her and increased
the feeling she inspired. Her hands thrust into her kerchief, she
was slily watching me, looking downwards (I was seated, while she was
standing). A wicked little smile strayed about her lips and her cheeks
and in the shadow of her long eyelashes. ‘Ugh, you pampered little fine
gentleman!’ this smile seemed to express. Every time she drew a breath,
her nostrils slightly distended--this, too, was rather strange. But all
the same, it seemed to me that were Anna Martinovna to love me, or even
to care to kiss me with her thin cruel lips, I should simply bound up
to the ceiling with delight. I knew she was very severe and exacting,
that the peasant women and girls went in terror of her--but what of
that? Anna Martinovna secretly excited my imagination … though after
all, I was only fifteen then,--and at that age!…
Martin Petrovitch roused himself again, ‘Anna!’ he shouted, ‘you ought
to strum something on the pianoforte … young gentlemen are fond of
that.’