“What?  Sit down?  Thank you,” loftily replied the princess.  And she went toward a dignified personage who was entering, adorned with many orders and an aristocratic beard.

The general’s wife soon came to herself.  “Rita!  I must wash and dress as quickly as possible.  Ah! pray forgive me, doctor!  They called me away to my husband.  They were placing him in the coffin.”  She sighed deeply.  “What is this?  Oh, yes, the announcement of his death.  Very good.  Send it, please.  But I must dress at once.  The funeral service will begin immediately.”

“Doctor!  Is the doctor here?” an anxious voice sounded in the corridor.

“I am coming!  What is it?”

“Please come quick, Edouard Vicentevitch!” Yakov called him.  “The lady is very ill downstairs; Anna Iurievna, the general’s daughter!  I was out to order the flowers; I come back, and see the lady lying in a faint in the entrance.  She had just arrived, and asked; and they answered her that he was dead, without the slightest preparation!  And she could not bear it, and fainted.”

Yakov said all this as they went.

“Actress!” angrily thought Olga Vseslavovna.  And immediately she added mentally, “Well, she may stand on her head now, it is all the same to me!”

IV

Whether it was all the same to her or not, the deep despair of the daughter, who had not been in time to bid her father farewell, had not been in time to receive his blessing, after many years of anger, which had borne heavily on the head of the blameless young woman, was so evidently sincere, and produced such a deep impression on everyone, that her stepmother also was moved.

Anna Iurievna resembled her father, as much as a young, graceful, pretty woman can resemble an elderly man with strongly-marked features and athletic frame, such as was General Nazimoff.  But in spite of the delicacy of her form, and the gentleness of her eyes, her glance sometimes flashed fire in a manner very like the flashing eyes of her father, and in her strong will, firm character, and inflexible adherence to what she believed to be necessary and right, Anna was exactly like her father.

For nearly ten years his daughter had obediently borne his anger; from the day of her marriage to the man she loved, whom evil-minded people had succeeded in calumniating in the general’s mind.  Though writing incessantly to him, begging him to pardon her, to understand that he had made a mistake, that her husband was a man of honor, and that she would be fully and perfectly happy, but for the burden of her father’s wrath, and of the separation from him, she had never until the last few weeks received a reply from him.  But quite recently something mysterious had happened.  Not only had her father written to her that he wished to see her and her children in St. Petersburg, whither he was just setting out, but a few days later he had written again, a long,