stood at the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open to relieve them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which floated in from the other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor, consumptive woman. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have grown even thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her face was brighter than ever.
“You wouldn’t believe, you can’t imagine, Polenka,” she said, walking about the room, “what a happy luxurious life we had in my papa’s house and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring you all, to ruin! Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from being a governor; so that everyone who came to see him said, ‘We look upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch, as our governor!’
When I … when …” she coughed violently, “oh, cursed life,” she cried, clearing her throat and pressing her hands to her breast, “when I … when at the last ball … at the marshal’s … Princess Bezzemelny saw me—who gave me the blessing when your father and I were married, Polenka—she asked at once ‘Isn’t that the pretty girl who danced the shawl dance at the breaking-up?’ (You must mend that tear, you must take your needle and darn it as I showed you, or tomorrow—cough, cough, cough—he will make the hole bigger,” she articulated with effort.) “Prince Schegolskoy, a kammerjunker , had just come from Petersburg then … he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to make me an offer next day; but I thanked him in flattering expressions and told him that my heart had long been another’s. That other was your father, Polya; papa was fearfully angry. …
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