At the grave, too, Evlampia stood, as it were, lost. Thoughts were torturing her … bitter thoughts. I noticed that Sletkin, who several times addressed some remark to her, she treated as she had once treated Zhitkov, and worse still. Some days later, there was a rumour all over our neighbourhood, that Evlampia Martinovna had left the home of her fathers for ever, leaving all the property that came to her to her sister and brother-in-law, and only taking some hundreds of roubles.… ‘So Anna’s bought her out, it seems!’ remarked my mother; ‘but you and I, certainly,’ she added, addressing Zhitkov, with whom she was playing picquet--he took Souvenir’s place, ‘are not skilful hands!’ Zhitkov looked dejectedly at his mighty palms.… ‘Hands like that! Not skilful!’ he seemed to be saying to himself.… Soon after, my mother and I went to live in Moscow, and many years passed before it was my lot to behold Martin Petrovitch’s daughters again. XXX But I did see them again. Anna Martinovna I came across in the most ordinary way. After my mother’s death I paid a visit to our village, where I had not been for over fifteen years, and there I received an invitation from the mediator (at that time the process of settling the boundaries between the peasants and their former owners was taking place over the whole of Russia with a slowness not yet forgotten) to a meeting of the other landowners of our neighbourhood, to be held on the estate of the widow Anna Sletkin. The news that my mother’s ‘nasty little Jew,’ with the prune-coloured eyes, no longer existed in this world, caused me, I confess, no regret whatever. But it was interesting to get a glimpse of his widow. She had the reputation in the neighbourhood of a first-rate manager. And so it proved; her estate and homestead and the house itself (I could not help glancing at the roof; it was an iron one) all turned out to be in excellent order; everything was neat, clean, tidied-up, where needful--painted, as though its mistress were a German. Anna Martinovna herself, of course, looked older. But the peculiar, cold, and, as it were, wicked charm which had once so fascinated me had not altogether left her. She was dressed in rustic fashion, but elegantly. She received us, not cordially--that word was not applicable to her--but courteously, and on seeing me, a witness of that fearful scene, not an eyelash quivered. She made not the slightest reference to my mother, nor her father, nor her sister, nor her husband.