But the good mistress died; part of the keys, and of the petty cares along with them, passed to him. Plyushkin grew more restless and, like all widowers, more suspicious and stingy. He could not rely altogether on his eldest daughter, Alexandra Stepanovna, and right he was, because Alexandra Stepanovna soon eloped with a staff captain of God knows what cavalry regiment and married him hastily somewhere in a village church, knowing that her father disliked officers, from the strange prejudice that the military are all supposed to be gamblers and spendthrifts.
