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making Mathilde smile. Still, she was tired. It was time to seriously consider obtaining a governess for the children, someone educated to please David, yet someone who would teach Anna to be a lady. The present girl, now taking her vacation, had been too young, though she would last out this year. But this winter, in Paris, Mathilde would begin her search, for if the family was indeed to return to Petersburg, she did not want to do it without an appropriate Mademoiselle for her children. Titine, the old nurse, would naturally have charge of the new baby, as she had had of Ida’s nine and of Mathilde’s first three. She sighed, a languorous exhaling of breath, and knew that at least this part was settled. Titine was a family fixture, unlettered but sturdily competent.
    She blamed her pregnancy as well as the oppressive heat and isolation of Mohilna for the one recurring thought that would awaken her at night, sending tremors up her spine. Ossip’s specialist, when he had first examined the boy, had said, “If he survives this attack, he will most probably suffer another one when he is twenty. Then, if he emerges once more, he will be struck again when he is forty-five. And then, my dear Baroness, his body will surely give up the good fight. But you must not take this prediction as the Lord’s word. In cases such as these, patterns exist, and they guide our prognosis. Yet patterns are not blueprints. Keep the boy out of any situation where he might be jostled or pushed, and he will be able to lead an almost normal existence.” Mathilde de Gunzburg said to herself: Do not be a fool. Ossip will not die, ever, and he shall not be sick again. And she upbraided herself for her emotions.

    T oward the end of August , a woman arrived at Mohilna whom the children had not met before, and who filled them with excited wonder. She was middle-aged, with a plain, kind face, and her only attire consisted of a brown dress that hung in modest folds to her sturdy feet. Her name was Madame Gilina, and she took her meals neither with the family nor with the servants. Though they did not understand her presence, as the adults told them that it was not their business to know, the children liked her, for she spoke to everyone in her concerned voice and seemed equally at ease with their Papa as with their old nurse, Titine.
    Anna and Sonia were not surprised when they entered their bedroom one evening and found Madame Gilina chatting amiably with the leathery, sinewy Célestine Varon. Titine, as always, was mending clothes, her bony fingers still agile. Madame Gilina was shaking her head and sighing, “Yes, they were being put out, and that house a mere hovel, no more.”
    â€œWhat are you speaking of?” Anna asked abruptly, coming to the women.
    Madame Gilina softly ran her fingers through the girl’s unruly hair, and said, “Never mind, Anna Davidovna, my dear.”
    But Anna shook herself free, her brown eyes blazing. “Please, you must tell, especially if an injustice has been done! I need to know!”
    Unnerved by Anna’s intensity, Madame Gilina said, “It was when I was being driven here from Uman. We passed a village—Rigevka?—and I saw a man and his servants putting a family out of their house. He was repeating over and over, ‘If you cannot meet the rent, you have no business occupying my property.’ But the father of the family, he looked so ill...” She wiped her eyes hastily on a sturdy white handkerchief.
    Anna stood up, clenching her fists. “This story is as dreadful as what we learned about Count Tuminsky, when his man flogged me. If you are poor, you are a nobody, an absolute nothing! You can starve, and your body gets kicked aside! Oh, sometimes I wish that I were not a Gunzburg, that we did not possess Mohilna, or our fine carriages, and Mama’s elegant dresses. They make me feel—ashamed.”
    â€œMy little love, that is simply the