midnight
She knew that it was impossible to do without the law , but for some reason , whenever Nazaritch , the manager of the factory , or the bailiff of her villa in the country , both of whom frequently went to law , used to win lawsuits of some sort for her benefit , she always felt uneasy and , as it were , ashamed . On this occasion , too , she felt uneasy and awkward , and wanted to put that fifteen hundred roubles further away that it might be out of her sight . She thought with vexation that other girls of her age -- she was in her twenty-sixth year -- were now busy looking after their households , were weary and would sleep sound , and would wake up tomorrow morning in holiday mood ; many of them had long been married and had children . Only she , for some reason , was compelled to sit like an old woman over these letters , to make notes upon them , to write answers , then to do nothing the whole evening till midnight , but wait till she was sleepy ; and tomorrow they would all day long be coming with Christmas greetings and asking for favours ; and the day after tomorrow there would certainly be some scandal at the factory -- some one would be beaten or would die of drinking too much vodka , and she would be fretted by pangs of conscience ; and after the holidays Nazaritch would turn off some twenty of the workpeople for absence from work , and all of the twenty would hang about at the front door , without their caps on , and she would be ashamed to go out to them , and they would be driven away like dogs . And all her acquaintances would say behind her back , and write to her in anonymous letters , that she was a millionaire and exploiter -- that she was devouring other men 's lives and sucking the blood of the workers . Here there lay a heap of letters read through and laid aside already . They were all begging letters .