Hardly had the general’s wife departed when Martha asked the general to let her leave, saying she would find work elsewhere.  The general saw no way of keeping her; and he did not even wish to do so, thinking her only a quarrelsome, ill-tempered woman.  The confidential servant left the house, and even the city.  And immediately her revenge and torture of the general began, cutting straight at the root of his happiness, his health, even his life.  He began to receive, almost daily, letters from different parts of Russia, for Martha had plenty of friends and chums.  With measureless cruelty Martha began by sending the less important documents, still signed with her mistress’ maiden name; then two or three letters from the series of the most recent times, and finally there came a whole packet of those sent by the general’s wife to the tutor, in the first year of her marriage with the general, before Borisoff had met Anna.

The crafty Martha, knowing perfectly the whole state of affairs to which these letters referred, often copied out their contents, and kept the letters themselves concealed, saying to herself, “God knows what may turn up, some day!

“If they are no use, I can burn them.  But they may be useful.  It is always a good thing to keep our masters in our power,” argued the sagacious woman, and she was not mistaken in her calculations, although these letters served not for her profit, but only for a sanguinary revenge.

These notes and letters, which finally opened his eyes to the true character of his wife, and his own crying injustice to his elder children, were now lying in the general’s dispatch box, in a neatly tied packet, directed in the doctor’s handwriting to “Her Excellency Olga Vseslavovna Nazimoff.”

As soon as she received her father’s first letter Anna began to get ready to go to St. Petersburg, but unfortunately she was kept back by the sickness, first of one child, then of another.  But for his last telegrams, she would not have started even now, because she did not realize the dangerous character of his illness.  But now, finding that she had come too late, the unhappy woman could not forgive herself.

Everyone was grieved to see her bitter sorrow, after the funeral service for her father.  Princess Ryadski burst into tears, as she looked at her; and all the acquaintances and relations of the general were far more disturbed by her despair than by the general’s death.  Olga Vseslavovna was secretly scandalized at such lack of self-control, but outwardly she seemed greatly touched and troubled by the situation of her poor stepdaughter.  But she did not venture to express her sympathy too openly in the presence of others, remembering the words of “the crazy creature” when she had come to herself after her fainting fit, and her stepmother had hurried up to embrace her.

“Leave me!” Anna had cried, when she saw her.  “I cannot bear to see you!  You killed my father!”