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The lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All at once,

with some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a

peculiar swing of his shoulders at each step. He tossed his

cockaded cap on the table and sat down in an easy-chair. The

small lady positively skipped from her seat on seeing him, and

fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy; but the officer took not

the smallest notice of her, and she did not venture to sit down

again in his presence. He was the assistant superintendent. He

had a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally on each side

of his face, and extremely small features, expressive of nothing

much except a certain insolence. He looked askance and rather

indignantly at Raskolnikov; he was so very badly dressed, and in

spite of his humiliating position, his bearing was by no means in

keeping with his clothes. Raskolnikov had unwarily fixed a very

long and direct look on him, so that he felt positively

affronted.