A Russian Proprietor Volume 9

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... FAMILY HAPPINESS (1859) PART FIRST CHAPTER I SONYA and I were in mourning for our mother, who had died in the autumn, and we had spent the whole winter in the country alone with Katya. Katya was an old family friend, our governess, who had brought all of us up, and whom I had known and loved ever since my memory began. Sonya was my younger sister. The winter at our old house at Pokrovskoye had been dreary and forlorn. The weather had been cold and windy, so that the snowdrifts were heaped high above our windows; the panes had been almost constantly covered with frost, so that nothing could be seen out of them, and we had been kept housed almost all the time. It was rare that any friends came to see us, and, if they did, they brought no increase of joy or cheer to Dur home. All wore long faces, and spoke with subdued voices, as if afraid of awakening some one; all refrained from laughing, but they sighed, and often shed tears and looked solemnly at me, and especially at little Sonya, in her black frock. The presence of death still seemed to be felt in the house; the grief and horror of death were in the very atmosphere. Mamma's chamber was shut up, and I felt a sensation of pain, and also a strange impulse to look into that cold and empty chamber, when I passed by it on my way to bed. At that time I was seventeen, and mamma, the very year that she died, was intending to move to the city for the sake of "bringing me out." The loss of my mother was a terrible grief for me; but I must confess that there was associated with it the feeling that I was young and pretty -- for everybody told me so -- and that it was a pity to have wasted another winter alone in the country. Before the end of the winter this painful sense of. loneliness and tedium...