"'Now take her,' said my father to me with earnestness. 'I bequeathe to you my daughter, your sister. You will hear everything from Jacob,' he added, while he pointed to his valet.
"Assja burst out sobbing, and threw herself on the bed. Half an hour afterward my father was dead.
"I learned the following story: Assja was the daughter of my father and a former waiting maid of my mother's, named Tatiana. She rose distinct to my remembrance, this Tatiana, with her tall, slender figure, her serious face, regular features, her dark and earnest eyes. She had the reputation of a proud, unapproachable girl. As nearly as I could learn from Jacob's reserved and respectful story, my father had entered into close relations with her some years after my mother's death. At that time Tatiana was not in her master's house, but living with a married sister, the dairywoman, in a separate hut. My father became very much attached to her, and wished to marry her after my departure, but she herself refused this in spite of his entreaties.
"'The departed Tatiana Vlassievna'--so Jacob told me, standing against the door, with his hands crossed behind his back--'was in all things very thoughtful, and would not lower your father. "A fine wife I should be for you--a real lady wife!" she said to him--in my presence she has said it.' Tatiana never would come back to the house, but remained, together with Assja, living with her sister as before. As a child I had often seen Tatiana at church on saint days. She stood among the servants, usually near a window. She wore a dark cloth wound about her head and a yellow shawl on her shoulders--the strong outline of her face clear against the transparent pane; and she prayed silently and humbly, bowing very low after the old fashion. When my uncle took me away Assja was just two; when she lost her mother, just nine years old.
"Immediately after Tatiana's death my father took Assja home to himself. He had already expressed a wish to have her with him, but Tatiana had refused it. You can imagine what Assja must have felt when she was taken into the master's house. To this day she has not forgotten the hour when for the first time they dressed her in a silk dress and kissed her little hand. In her mother's lifetime she had been brought up with great strictness: my father left her without a single restraint. He was her instructor; except him, she saw no one. He did not spoil her; at least he did not follow her about like a nursemaid, but he loved her fondly, and refused her nothing. He was conscious of guilt toward her. Assja soon discovered that she was the principal person in the household. She knew the master was her father, but at the same time she began to understand her equivocal position. Wilfulness and distrust were developed to an extreme degree in her. Bad manners were contracted; simplicity vanished. She wished (she herself told me) to compel the whole world to forget her origin. She was ashamed of her mother, was ashamed of being ashamed, and was in turn proud of her. You see that she knew and knows still many things that should not be known at her age. But does the blame rest with her? Youth was strong in her: her blood flowed hot, and no hand near to guide her--the fullest independence in everything! Is such a fate easily borne? She would not be inferior to other girls. She rushed headlong into study. But what good could result from it? The life, lawlessly begun, seemed likely to develop lawlessly. But the heart remained true and the reason sound.