to shriek at him, 'But I'm your daughter! your daughter!' But I thought
in those words, in that cry of the heart, he would doubtless hear
nothing but a desire to assert my rights, my claims on his property, on
his money.... Oh, no, for nothing in the world would I say a word to
this man, who had not once mentioned my mother's name to me, in whose
eyes I was of so little account that he did not even trouble himself to
ascertain whether I was aware of my parentage! Or, perhaps, he
suspected, even knew it, and did not wish 'to raise a dust' (a favourite
saying of his, almost the only Russian expression he ever used), did not
care to deprive himself of a good reader with a young voice! No! no! Let
him go on wronging his daughter, as he had wronged her mother! Let him
carry both sins to the grave! I swore it, I swore he should not hear
from my lips the word which must have something of a sweet and holy
sound in every ear! I would not say to him father! I would not forgive
him for my mother and myself! He felt no need of that forgiveness, of
that name.... It could not be, it could not be that he felt no need of
it! But he should not have forgiveness, he should not, he should not!

God knows whether I should have kept my vow, and whether my heart would
not have softened, whether I should not have overcome my shyness, my
shame, and my pride... but it happened with Ivan Matveitch just as with
my mother. Death carried him off suddenly, and also in the night. It was
again Mr. Ratsch who waked me, and ran with me to the big house, to Ivan
Matveitch's bedroom.... But I found not even the last dying gestures,
which had left such a vivid impression on my memory at my mother's
bedside. On the embroidered, lace-edged pillows lay a sort of withered,
dark-coloured doll, with sharp nose and ruffled grey eyebrows.... I
shrieked with horror, with loathing, rushed away, stumbled in doorways
against bearded peasants in smocks with holiday red sashes, and found
myself, I don't remember how, in the fresh air....