I Was a Widower, and I Was a Wife

She was a widow when I married her with three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her father's house. He gave way to cards, got into trouble, and with that he died. And she was left at his death with three children in a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time. Her relations had all thrown her off, and she was proud too excessively proud. That's why she would not overlook Mr. Lebaziatnikov's rudeness to her,. so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to