At dinner-time Vaninka came downstairs and found her father alone.  Foedor had not enough courage to be present at the meal and to meet her again, just when he had lost all hope:  he had taken a sleigh, and driven out to the outskirts of the city.

During the whole time dinner lasted Vaninka and the general hardly exchanged a word, but although this silence was so expressive, Vaninka controlled her face with her usual power, and the general alone appeared sad and dejected.

That evening, just when Vaninka was going downstairs, tea was brought to her room, with the message that the general was fatigued and had retired.  Vaninka asked some questions about the nature of his indisposition, and finding that it was not serious, she told the servant who had brought her the message to ask her father to send for her if he wanted anything.  The general sent to say that he thanked her, but he only required quiet and rest.  Vaninka announced that she would retire also, and the servant withdrew.

Hardly had he left the room when Vaninka ordered Annouschka, her foster-sister, who acted as her maid, to be on the watch for Foedor’s return, and to let her know as soon as he came in.

At eleven o’clock the gate of the mansion opened:  Foedor got out of his sleigh, and immediately went up to his room.  He threw himself upon a sofa, overwhelmed by his thoughts.  About midnight he heard someone tapping at the door:  much astonished, he got up and opened it.  It was Annouschka, who came with a message from her mistress, that Vaninka wished to see him immediately.  Although he was astonished at this message, which he was far from expecting, Foedor obeyed.

He found Vaninka seated, dressed in a white robe, and as she was paler than usual he stopped at the door, for it seemed to him that he was gazing at a marble statue.

“Come in,” said Vaninka calmly.

Foedor approached, drawn by her voice like steel to a magnet.  Annouschka shut the door behind him.

“Well, and what did my father say?” said Vaninka.

Foedor told her all that had happened.  The young girl listened to his story with an unmoved countenance, but her lips, the only part of her face which seemed to have any colour, became as white as the dressing-gown she was wearing.  Foedor, on the contrary, was consumed by a fever, and appeared nearly out of his senses.

“Now, what do you intend to do?” said Vaninka in the same cold tone in which she had asked the other questions.

“You ask me what I intend to do, Vaninka?  What do you wish me to do?  What can I do, but flee from St. Petersburg, and seek death in the first corner of Russia where war may break out, in order not to repay my patron’s kindness by some infamous baseness?”

“You are a fool,” said Vaninka, with a mixed smile of triumph and contempt; for from that moment she felt her superiority over Foedor, and saw that she would rule him like a queen for the rest of her life.