Soon Vérotchka's mother stopped calling her gypsy and scare-crow; she dressed her even with greater care, and Matroena (this was a third Matroena, who, like her predecessors, always had a black eye and sometimes a swollen cheek), Matroena told Vérotchka that the chief of her father's bureau desired to ask her hand in marriage, and that this chief was a grave man, wearing a cross upon his neck.
In fact, the employees of the ministry had noticed the advances of the chief of the department towards his subordinate. And this chief said to one of his colleagues that he intended to marry and that the dowry was of little consequence, provided the woman was beautiful; he added that Pavel Konstantinytch was an excellent official.
What would have happened no one knows; but, while the chief of the department was in this frame of mind, an important event occurred:
The son of the mistress appeared at the steward's to say that his mother desired Pavel Konstantinytch to bring her several samples of wall paper, as she wished to newly furnish her apartments. Orders of this nature were generally transmitted by the major-domo. The intention was evident, and would have been to people of less experience than Vérotchka's parents. Moreover, the son of the proprietor remained more than half an hour to take tea.
The next day Maria Alexevna gave her daughter a bracelet which had not been redeemed and ordered new dresses for her. Vérotchka much admired both the bracelet and the dresses, and was given further occasion to rejoice by her mother's purchase for her at last of some glossy boots of admirable elegance. These toilet expenses were not lost, for Mikhaïl Ivanytch came every day to the steward's and found—it goes without saying—in Vérotchka's conversation a peculiar charm, which—and this too goes without saying—was not displeasing to the steward and his wife. At least the latter gave her daughter long instructions, which it is useless to detail.
"Dress yourself, Vérotchka," she said to her one evening, on rising from the table; "I have prepared a surprise for you. We are going to the opera, and I have taken a box in the second tier, where there are none but generals. All this is for you, little stupid. For it I do not hesitate to spend my last copecks, and your father on his side scatters his substance in foolish expenditures for your sake. To the governess, to the boarding-school, to the piano-teacher, what a sum we have paid! You know nothing of all that, ingrate that you are! You have neither soul nor sensibilities."
Maria Alexevna said nothing further; for she no longer abused her daughter, and, since the reports about the chief of the department, had even ceased to beat her.
So they went to the opera. After the first act the son of the mistress came in, followed by two friends, one of whom, dressed as a civilian, was very thin and
