"His eyes! He is looking at me!" the general's wife staggered
forward and fell fainting to the floor, beside her husband's bier.

V

The deacon sprang from his sofa with a cry, and an answering cry came
from the lips of the shivering Rita, as she fled from the room.
Servants rushed in, rubbing their eyes, still half-asleep, questioning
each other, running this way and that. The deacon, spurred by a
feeling of guilt, was determined to conceal the fact that he was
sleeping. "It was the lady!" he said. "She came in to pray; she told
me to stop reading while she prayed. She knelt down. Then she prayed
for a long time, and suddenly ... suddenly she cried out, and fainted.
Grief, brothers! It is terrible! To lose such a husband!" and he set
them to work with restoratives, himself rubbing the fallen woman's
chilly hands.

The general's wife opened her eyes after a few minutes.

Looking wildly round in bewilderment, she seemed to be wondering where
she was and how she had come there. Suddenly she remembered.

"The will! In his hands! Take it!" she cried, and fainted again. By
this time the whole household was awake. Anna Iurievna had come in,
full of astonishment at the sudden disturbance, but with the same
feeling of deep quiet and peace still filling her heart and giving her
features an expression of joy and calm. She heard the cry of the
general's wife, and the words were recorded in her mind, though she
did not at first give them any meaning.

She set herself, with all the tenderness of a good woman, to minister
to the other's need, sending her own maid for sal volatile, chafing
the fainting woman's hands, and giving orders that a bed should be
prepared for her in another room, further away from the bier. As she
spoke, quietly, gravely, with authority, the turmoil gradually
subsided. The frightened servants recovered themselves, and moved
about with the orderly obedience they ordinarily showed; and the
deacon, above all anxious to cover his negligence, began intoning the
liturgy, lending an atmosphere of solemnity to the whole room.

The servants, returning to announce that the bedroom was ready, were
ordered by Anna Iurievna to lift the fainting woman with all care and
gentleness, and she herself went with them to see the general's wife
safely bestowed in her room, and waited while the doctor did all in
his power to make her more comfortable. Olga Vseslavovna did not at
once recover consciousness. She seemed to p