The narrator’s father holds a very important position in the provincial city. He is a heavy, gloomy, silent, and cruel man. Small, dense, stooped, dark and big-nosed, outwardly he resembles a crow. His father is widowed for a long time, he has two children - the narrator and his little sister Lily. The whole family lives in a spacious state-owned apartment.
For more than six months the storyteller spent in Moscow, studied at the Katkovsky Lyceum. In the spring, after graduating from the Lyceum, he arrives home and is amazed at the changes that have occurred in the life of his family. The formerly cold and dark house is illuminated by the presence of the new nanny of the eight-year-old Lily - the poor girl Elena, the daughter of a petty subordinate father, thin, blond, with a thin tender face. She is glad that she got well right after the gymnasium, as well as the arrival of the narrator, the appearance of a peer in the house. With her father, she is timid, constantly anxiously watching the silent, angry, sharp Lily.
In the evenings, father always drinks tea, and Elena is sitting at the samovar. Father says strange things, for example, that blond women wear dresses made of black or crimson velvet with a ruby cross. He adds that all this is only a dream, because Elena’s father receives a small salary, and he has five more children besides Elena, and she will probably have to live in poverty. He tells the storyteller that he is unlikely to receive his inheritance because "he doesn’t really favor daddy with his love."
The narrator and Elena fall in love with each other, hug and kiss during short meetings. Once the father sees this and sends the storyteller to his Samara village for the whole summer, and in the fall he tells him to find a job in Moscow or St. Petersburg and threatens to disinherit in case of disobedience.
On the same night, the narrator leaves for one of the lyceum comrades in the village of Yaroslavl province and lives with him until the fall. In the fall, under the patronage of the comrade’s father, the narrator enters the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg. He writes to his father that he is giving up inheritance and all help.
In winter, the narrator learns that his father left the service and moved to Petersburg "with his lovely young wife." Once the narrator notices them in the box of the Mariinsky Theater. Father’s wife, Elena, is dressed in a crimson velvet dress, a ruby cross sparkles on her neck.
