become its head. It was terribly unexpected. Driving home one wintry
afternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where I had to remain
permanently administering the estate and at tending to the complicated
affairs--(the girls took it in turn week and week about)--driving, as
I said, from the house of the Countess Tekla Potocka, where our invalid
mother was staying then to be near a doctor, they lost the road and got
stuck in a snow drift. She was alone with the coachman and old Valery,
the personal servant of our late father. Impatient of delay while they
were trying to dig themselves out, she jumped out of the sledge and went
to look for the road herself. All this happened in '51, not ten miles
from the house in which we are sitting now.

"The road was soon found, but snow had begun to fall thickly again, and
they were four more hours getting home. Both the men took off their
sheepskin lined greatcoats and used all their own rugs to wrap her up
against the cold, notwithstanding her protests, positive orders, and
even struggles, as Valery afterward related to me. 'How could I,' he
remonstrated with her, 'go to meet the blessed soul of my late master
if I let any harm come to you while there's a spark of life left in my
body?' When they reached home at last the poor old man was stiff and
speechless from exposure, and the coachman was in not much better
plight, though he had the strength to drive round to the stables
himself. To my reproaches for venturing out at all in such weather, she
answered, characteristically, that she could not bear the thought of
abandoning me to my cheerless solitude. It is incomprehensible how it
was that she was allowed to start. I suppose it had to be! She made
light of the cough which came on next day, but shortly afterward
inflammation of the lungs set in, and in three weeks she was no more!
She was the first to be taken away of the young generation under my
care. Behold the vanity of all hopes and fears! I was the most frail