Shubin had spoken truly. The unexpected news of Elena’s marriage nearly killed Anna Vassilyevna. She took to her bed. Nikolai Artemyevitch insisted on her not admitting her daughter to her presence; he seemed to be enjoying the opportunity of showing himself in the fullest sense the master of the house, with all the authority of the head of the family; he made an incessant uproar in the household, storming at the servants, and constantly saying: ‘I will show you who I am, I will let you know — you wait a little!’ While he was in the house, Anna Vassilyevna did not see Elena, and had to be content with Zoya, who waited on her very devotedly, but kept thinking to herself: ‘Diesen Insarof vorziehen — und wem?‘ But directly Nikolai Artemyevitch went out — and that happened pretty often, Augustina Christianovna had come back in sober earnest — Elena went to her mother, and a long time her mother gazed at her in silence and in tears.

This dumb reproach, more deeply than any other, cut Elena to the heart; at such moments she felt, not remorse, but a deep, boundless pity akin to remorse.

‘Mamma, dear mamma!’ she would repeat, kissing her hands; ‘what was I to do? I’m not to blame, I loved him, I could not have acted differently. Throw the blame on fate for throwing me with a man whom papa doesn’t like, and who is taking me away from you.’

‘Ah!’ Anna Vassilyevna cut her short, ‘don’t remind me of that. When I think where you mean to go, my heart is ready to burst!’

‘Dear mamma,’ answered Elena, ‘be comforted; at least, it might have been worse; I might have died.’

‘But, as it is, I don’t expect to see you again. Either you will end your days there in a tent somewhere’— Anna Vassilyevna pictured Bulgaria as something after the nature of the Siberian swamps — ‘or I shall not survive the separation ——’

‘Don’t say that, mamma dearest, we shall see each other again, please God. There are towns in Bulgaria just as there are here.’

‘Fine towns there, indeed! There is war going on there now; wherever you go, I suppose they are firing cannons off all the while . . . Are you meaning to set off soon?’

‘Soon . . . if only papa. He means to appeal to the authorities; he threatens to separate us.’

Anna Vassilyevna turned her eyes heavenwards............