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Tatyana Grigoryevna Zarubkin was one of the most looked-up to ladies of the S——­ Regiment and even of the whole town of Chmyrsk, where the regiment was quartered.  To be sure, you hardly could say that, outside the regiment, the town could boast any ladies at all.  There were very respectable women, decent wives, mothers, daughters and widows of honourable citizens; but they all dressed in cotton and flannel, and on high holidays made a show of cheap Cashmere gowns over which they wore gay shawls with borders of wonderful arabesques.  Their hats and other headgear gave not the faintest evidence of good taste.  So they could scarcely be dubbed “ladies.”  They were satisfied to be called “women.”  Each one of them, almost, had the name of her husband’s trade or position tacked to her name—­Mrs. Grocer so-and-so, Mrs. Mayor so-and-so, Mrs. Milliner so-and-so, etc.  Genuine ladies in the Russian society sense had never come to the town before the S——­Regiment had taken up its quarters there; and it goes without saying that the ladies of the regiment had nothing in common, and therefore no intercourse with, the women of the town.  They were so dissimilar that they were like creatures of a different species.

There is no disputing that Tatyana Grigoryevna Zarubkin was one of the most looked-up-to of the ladies.  She invariably played the most important part at all the regimental affairs—­the amateur theatricals, the social evenings, the afternoon teas.  If the captain’s wife was not to be present, it was a foregone conclusion that the affair would not be a success.

The most important point was that Mrs. Zarubkin had the untarnished reputation of being the best-dressed of all the ladies.  She was always the most distinguished looking at the annual ball.  Her gown for the occasion, ordered from Moscow, was always chosen with the greatest regard for her charms and defects, and it was always exquisitely beautiful.  A new fashion could not gain admittance to the other ladies of the regiment except by way of the captain’s wife.  Thanks to her good taste in dressing, the stately blonde was queen at all the balls and in all the salons of Chmyrsk.  Another advantage of hers was that although she was nearly forty she still looked fresh and youthful, so that the young officers were constantly hovering about her and paying her homage.

November was a very lively month in the regiment’s calendar.  It was on the tenth of November that the annual ball took place.  The ladies, of course, spent their best efforts in preparation for this event.  Needless to say that in these arduous activities, Abramka Stiftik, the ladies’ tailor, played a prominent role.  He was the one man in Chmyrsk who had any understanding at all for the subtle art of the feminine toilet.  Preparations had begun in his shop in August already.  Within the last weeks his modest parlour—­furnished with six shabby chairs placed about a round table, and a fly-specked mirror on the wall—­the atmosphere heavy with a smell of onions and herring, had been filled from early morning to the evening hours with the most charming and elegant of the fairer sex.  There was trying-on and discussion of styles and selection of material.  It was all very nerve-racking for the ladies.