I got up, meaning to go and change my dress, but he caught me just by the door.

“Why stand on such ceremony in the country?” he said, looking with a smile at the kerchief on my head. “You don’t mind the presence of your butler, and I am really the same to you as Grigóri is.” But I felt just then that he was looking at me in a way quite unlike Grigóri’s way, and I was uncomfortable.

“I shall come back at once,” I said, as I left them.

“But what is wrong?” he called out after me; “it’s just the dress of a young peasant woman.”