m the affectionate presence hovering round the son of the
favourite sister.

"You won't have many hours to yourself while you are staying with me,
brother," he said--this form of address borrowed from the speech of
our peasants being the usual expression of the highest good humour in
a moment of affectionate elation. "I shall be always coming in for a
chat."

As a matter of fact we had the whole house to chat in, and were
everlastingly intruding upon each other. I invaded the retirement of
his study where the principal feature was a colossal silver inkstand
presented to him on his fiftieth year by a subscription of all his
wards then living. He had been guardian of many orphans of land-owning
families from the three southern provinces--ever since the year 1860.
Some of them had been my schoolfellows and playmates, but not one of
them, girls or boys, that I know of has ever written a novel. One or two
were older than myself--considerably older, too. One of them, a visitor
I remember in my early years, was the man who first put me on horseback,
and his four-horse bachelor turnout, his perfect horsemanship and
general skill in manly exercises was one of my earliest admirations. I
seem to remember my mother looking on from a colonnade in front of the
dining-room windows as I was lifted upon the pony, held, for all I know,
by the very Joseph--the groom attached specially to my grandmother's
service--who died of cholera. It was certainly a young man in a dark
blue, tailless coat and huge Cossack trousers, that being the livery of
the men about the stables. It must have been in 1864, but reckoning by
another mode of calculating time, it was certainly in the year in which
my mother obtained permission to travel south and visit her family, from
the exile into which she had followed my father. For that, too, she had
had to ask permission, and I know that one of the conditions of that
favour was that she should be treated exactly as a condemned exile
herself. Yet a couple of years later, in memory of her eldest brother
who had served in the Guards and dying early left hosts of friends and
a loved memory in the great world of St. Petersburg, some influential
personages procured for her this permission--it was officially called
the "Highest Grace"--of a three months' leave from exile.

This is also the year in which I first begin to remember my mother with
more distinctness than a mere loving, wide-browed, silent, protecting
pres