‘May God have pity on his soul!’
‘You have not heard that your father met with an accident?’
‘No. I know nothing about things that have occurred at home since I left.’
‘While driving with three horses which he had bought, and which he would drive himself over to one of his neighbours, the horses shied, and reared, and upset the carriage, and he injured his head so that he died the day following.’
‘Had you returned home when it happened?’
‘No; your mother told me of it. It is now six months since it happened. His last words, your mother says, were “Call Theodore back, and Annita; she is in a convent at——” More he could not manage to utter. I believe that he intended to forgive us when he saw death approaching.’
‘Were you hidden in a convent?’
‘Yes, in a little nunnery in the neighbourhood of Novgorod.’ [[87]]
‘What is it called, and who took you there?’
‘That I don’t even now know; they were strangers whom I have never seen either before or since.’