Nikolai Parfenovich even got somewhat “carried away” at once. He himself admitted, talking about it afterwards in one place or another, that he had only then perceived how “good-looking” this woman was, and that before, the few times he had seen her, he had always regarded her as something of a “provincial hetaera.” “She has the manners of the highest society,” he once blurted out rapturously in some ladies’ circle. But this was received with the utmost indignation, and he was at once dubbed “a naughty boy” for it, which pleased him no end.
