tutor and teacher, and loved him sincerely. The boy had already
reached the highest class at school, when his sister, two years
older than he, finished her schooling, and returned to her father's
house, about the time of the general's second marriage. What the
young tutor tried not to notice and to endure, for love of his
pupil, in the first year of the general's second marriage, became
intolerable when the general's daughter returned home, and to all
the burden of his difficult position was added the knowledge of
their mutual love. He proceeded frankly, and the whole matter was
soon settled. But the young man had never uttered a syllable as to
the cause of Madame Nazimoff's hatred for him. For the sake of his
father-in-law's peace of mind, he sincerely hoped that he would
never know. Anna was convinced that the whole cause of her
stepmother's hostility was her prejudice against what was in her
opinion a mesalliance. In part she was right, but the chief reason
of this hostility remained forever a secret to her. Unfortunately,
it was not equally a secret to her father.

Of late years he had gradually been losing faith in his second
wife's character. It went so far that the general felt much more
at ease when she was away. Before the last illness of Iuri
Pavlovitch, which, to tell the truth, was almost his first, Olga
Vseslavovna had gone abroad with her daughter, intending to travel
for a year; but she had hardly been gone two months when the
general unexpectedly determined to go to St. Petersburg to seek a
divorce, to see his elder daughter, and change his will. Perhaps
he would never have determined on such decisive measures had not
something wholly unexpected taken place.

Borisoff was quite mistaken in thinking that he had so carefully