"At the time my uncle took me away, little Annouchka was only two years old; she was nine when she lost her mother. After the death of Tatiana, my father took the child to his own house. Already he had several times expressed a wish to do so, but Tatiana was always opposed to it. You may imagine what Annouchka must have felt when she found herself established in the house of him they called "the master." Even to the present time she preserves the remembrance of the day when for the first time she put on a silk dress, and they made her kiss his hand. Her mother had brought her up with severity; my father did not place the least restraint upon her. He charged himself with her education; she had no other master. He did not spoil her, or load her with useless tasks. He loved her ardently; he could refuse her nothing. Annouchka soon learned that she was the principal personage of the house; she knew that the master was her father; even then she had a feeling of her false position, and an _amour propre_ unhealthful and full of mistrust sprang up in her. Some bad habits took root; her _naïveté_ disappeared; she wished, she confided to me later, to force the whole world to forget her origin. At times she blushed at it; then, ashamed at her blushes, she showed that she was proud of her mother. You see that she knew, and knows still, a great many things which she should have been ignorant of at her age; but whose fault was it? The passion of youth burst forth impetuously, and there was no friendly hand to direct her. It is so difficult to make good use of such entire independence. So, not wishing to be behind other nobles' daughters, she devoted herself to reading; but what profit could she derive from it? Her life, begun in a false way, remained so, but her heart kept pure. "At this time I was but twenty years of age, and charged with the care of a young girl of thirteen. For the first few days after my father's death the sound of my voice was sufficient to throw her into a fever. My caresses caused her agony; it was but gradually and almost insensibly that she became accustomed to me. It is true that later, when she saw that I was thoughtful of her, and loved her as a sister, she became ardently attached to me; she could feel nothing half way.