We made advances. She was very willing to become acquainted with us, and it was not very long before she was like a mother to us, or an old aunt. My wife was then an inexperienced "housemistress" fresh to her duties, and found a great help in the old woman, who smilingly taught her how to proceed with the housekeeping. When our first child was born, she took it to her heart, and busied herself with its upbringing almost more than the young mother. It was evident that dandling the child in her arms was a joy to her beyond words. At such moments her eyes would brighten, her wrinkles grew faint, a curiously satisfied smile played round her lips, and a new note of joy came into her voice. At first sight all this seemed quite simple, because a woman is naturally inclined to care for little children, and it may have been so with her to an exceptional degree, but closer examination convinced me that here lay yet another reason; her attentions to the child, so it seemed, awakened pleasant memories of a long-ago past, when she herself was a young mother caring for children of her own, and looking at this strange child had stirred a longing for those other children, further from her eyes, but nearer to her heart, although perhaps quite unknown to her--who perhaps existed only in her imagination. And when we were made acquainted with the details of her life, we knew our conjectures to be true. Her history was very simple and commonplace, but very tragic. Perhaps the tragedy of such biographies lies in their being so very ordinary and simple! She lived quietly and happily with her husband for twenty years after their marriage. They were not rich, but their little house was a kingdom of delight, where no good thing was wanting. Their business was farming land that belonged to a Polish nobleman, a business that knows of good times and of bad, of fat years and lean years, years of high prices and years of low. But on the whole it was a good business and profitable, and it afforded them a comfortable living. Besides, they were used to the country, they could not fancy themselves anywhere else. The very thing that had never entered their head is just what happened. In the beginning of the "eighties" they were obliged to leave the estate they had farmed for ten years, because the lease was up, and the recently promulgated "temporary laws" forbade them to renew it. This was bad for them from a material point of view, because it left them without regular income just when their children were growing up and expenses had increased, but their mental distress was so great, that, for the time, the financial side of the misfortune was thrown into the shade.