What is to be Done? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky

Three months have passed since Viérotchka was rescued from the cellar. The Lopukhófs' affairs have prospered. He has had a fair number of pupils; he obtained work of a certain publisher, to translate a textbook on geography. Viéra Pavlovna also found two pupils, not of the highest grade, but still not to be despised. Together they have an income of eighty rubles a month. But such an income scarcely allows anyone to live luxuriously, but they ran no risk of running into poverty. Their means have gradually increased, and they have calculated that in four months or even sooner they can set up their own establishment. And this was afterwards realized.

The system of their lives was arranged, of course not absolutely in accordance with Viérotchka's half-jesting, half-serious plan proposed on the day of their fantastic engagement, but nevertheless it was very much like it. The old man and woman at whose house they lived, gossiped together about the strange way in which the young couple lived -- as though they were not young people at all, not even like husband and wife; like nobody else in the world.