Lidia Ivanovna's dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her dresses had done of late.

Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse of that she had pursued thirty years before.

Then her desire had been to adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better.

Now, on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so inconsistent with her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between these adornments and her own exterior should not be too appalling.

And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive.