Next morning, early, I went to the graveyard. May had come in all its
glory of flowers and leaves, and a long while I sat on the new grave. I
did not weep, nor grieve; one thought was filling my brain: 'Do you
hear, mother? He means to extend his protection to me, too!' And it
seemed to me that my mother ought not to be wounded by the smile which
it instinctively called up on my lips.

At times I wonder what made me so persistently desire to wring--not a
confession... no, indeed! but, at least, one warm word of kinship from
Ivan Matveitch? Didn't I know what he was, and how little he was like
all that I pictured in my dreams as a _father_!... But I was so
lonely, so alone on earth! And then, that thought, ever recurring, gave
me no rest: 'Did not she love him? She must have loved him for
something?'

Three years more slipped by. Nothing changed in the monotonous round of
life, marked out and arranged for us. Viktor was growing into a boy. I
was eight years older and would gladly have looked after him, but Mr.
Ratsch opposed my doing so. He gave him a nurse, who had orders to keep
strict watch that the child was not 'spoilt,' that is, not to allow me
to go near him. And Viktor himself fought shy of me. One day Mr. Ratsch
came into my room, perturbed, excited, and angry. On the previous
evening unpleasant rumours had reached me about my stepfather; the
servants were talking of his having been caught embezzling a
considerable sum of money, and taking bribes from a merchant.

'You can assist me,' he began, tapping impatiently on the table with his
fingers. 'Go and speak for me to Ivan Matveitch.'

'Speak for you? On what ground? What about?'