 A female landowner at whose estate most of the events of the novel happen.She is the widow of a privy councillor, “a wealthy and distinguished lady”.While she is not very influential in St Petersburg, let alone Europe, she is notorious in Moscow society as “a rather eccentric woman, not wholly good-natured, but excessively clever.” She is also described as a beauty in her youth, but “not a trace of her former charms remained.” She shuns the society of local female landowners, but receives many men.