Ivan Turgenev

“ Mashurina shook back her heavy hair. Twisted up carelessly into a small knot behind, it fell in front over her forehead and eyebrows.
'Ah, well', she declared; 'since the order's given, it's no use discussing it!'
'Of course not. Only it can't be done without money; and where are we to get the money?'
Mashurina pondered. 'Nezhdanov will have to produce it,' she said in an undertone, as though to herself.
'That's the very thing I've come about,' observed Ostrodumov. ”

“ He's such a slippery eel!'
'Here he comes at last,' said Mashurina suddenly, and in her small unlovely eyes, that were fastened on the door of the anteroom, there was a flash of something warm and tender, a kind of deep inward spot of light. . . .
The door opened, and this time there entered a young man of three-and-twenty, a cap on his head and a bundle of books under his arm—Nezhdanov himself. ”

“ A year and a half before, she had left her own people, a family of poor nobles in South Russia, and had come to Petersburg with six roubles in her pocket; she had entered a lying-in institution, and by unceasing hard work had gained the coveted diploma. She was a single woman . . . and a very chaste single woman. Nothing wonderful in that, some sceptic will say, remembering what has been said of her exterior. Something wonderful and rare, let us be permitted to say.
Paklin laughed again when he heard her retort. ”