In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off their hands.

The old count felt this most.

He would probably have been unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of his affairs.

He did not know at all how much he had, what his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera.

When his daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was impossible to give it to Vera.