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Chapter 3

Peasant Women

Who Have Faith

EAR the wooden portico below, built on to the outer
Nwall of the precinct, there was a crowd of about twenty
peasant women. They had been told that the elder was at last
coming out, and they had gathered together in anticipation.
Two ladies, Madame Hohlakov and her daughter, had also
come out into the portico to wait for the elder, but in a sepa-
rate part of it set aside for women of rank.
Madame Hohlakov was a wealthy lady, still young and
attractive, and always dressed with taste. She was rather
pale, and had lively black eyes. She was not more than thirty-
three, and had been five years a widow. Her daughter, a girl
of fourteen, was partially paralysed. The poor child had not
been able to walk for the last six months, and was wheeled
about in a long reclining chair. She had a charming little
face, rather thin from illness, but full of gaiety. There was a
gleam of mischief in her big dark eyes with their long lash-
es. Her mother had been intending to take her abroad ever
since the spring, but they had been detained all the sum-

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