“And there were no more telegrams?”

“No, madam, there were no more.  Yakov and our Friedrich would have let me know at once; I was there in the anteroom; they both kept coming through on errands.”

“But there were no more telegrams, except the two that were sent last night.”

Olga Vseslavovna dressed, breakfasted, and went to her husband.  But at the threshold of his room she was stopped by the direction of the sick man to admit no one without special permission except the doctor, or his eldest daughter, if she should come.

“Tell Edouard Vicentevitch to come out to me,” ordered the general’s wife.  The doctor was called, and in great confusion confirmed the general’s orders.

“But perhaps he did not think that such an order could apply to me?” she said, astonished.

The doctor apologized, but had to admit that it was she who was intended, and that his excellency had sent word to her excellency that she should not give herself the trouble of visiting him.

“He is out of his mind,” declared the general’s wife quietly, but with conviction, shrugging her shoulders.  “Why should he hate me so—­for all my love to him, an old man, who might have been my father?”

And Olga Vseslavovna once more took refuge in her pocket handkerchief, this time, instead of tears, giving vent to sobs of vexation.  The doctor, always shy in the presence of women, stood with hanging head and downcast eyes, as though he were to blame.

“What is it they are saying about you burning papers all night?” Olga Vseslavovna asked, in a weak voice.

“Oh, not nearly all night.  Iuri Pavlovitch remembered that he ought to destroy some old letters and papers.  There were some to be put in order.  There, in the box, there is a packet addressed to your excellency.  I was told to write the address.”

“Indeed!  Could I not see it?”

“Oh no, on no account.  They are all locked up in the box along with the last will.  And the general has the keys.”

A bitter smile of humiliation played about the young woman’s lips.

“So the new will has not been burned yet?” she asked.

And to the startled negative of the doctor, who repeated that “it was lying on the top of the papers in the box,” she added: 

“Well, it will be burned yet.  Do not fear.  Especially if God in His mercy prolongs my husband’s life.  You see, he has always had a mysterious passion for writing new documents, powers of attorney, deeds of gift, wills, whatever comes into his mind.  He writes new ones, and burns the old ones.  But what can you do?  We must submit to each new fancy.  We cannot contradict a sick man.”

Olga Vseslavovna went back to her room.  She only left her bedroom for a few minutes that day, to hear the final word of the lights of the medical profession, who had come together for a general consultation in the afternoon; all the rest of the day she shut herself up.  The conclusions of the physicians, though they differed completely in detail, were similar in the main, and far from comforting; the life and continued suffering of the sick man could not last more than a few days.