This confession took place about seven o’clock in the evening, and the solitude of the church, added to the darkness of night, had given it a still more awful character.  The confessor returned home, pale and trembling.  His wife Elizabeth was waiting for him alone.  She had just put her little daughter Arina, who was eight years old, to bed in an adjoining room.  When she saw her husband, she uttered a cry of terror, so changed and haggard was his appearance.  The confessor tried to reassure her, but his trembling voice only increased her alarm.  She asked the cause of his agitation; the confessor refused to tell her.  Elizabeth had heard the evening before that her mother was ill; she thought that her husband had received some bad news.  The day was Monday, which is considered an unlucky day among the Russians, and, going out that day, Elizabeth had met a man in mourning; these omens were too numerous and too strong not to portend misfortune.

Elizabeth burst into tears, and cried out, “My mother is dead!”

The priest in vain tried to reassure her by telling her that his agitation was not due to that.  The poor woman, dominated by one idea, made no response to his protestations but this everlasting cry, “My mother is dead!”

Then, to bring her to reason, the confessor told her that his emotion was due to the avowal of a crime which he had just heard in the confessional.  But Elizabeth shook her head:  it was a trick, she said, to hide from her the sorrow which had fallen upon her.  Her agony, instead of calming, became more violent; her tears ceased to flow, and were followed by hysterics.  The priest then made her swear to keep the secret, and the sanctity of the confession was betrayed.

Little Arina had awakened at Elizabeth’s cries, and being disturbed and at the same time curious as to what her parents were doing, she got up, went to listen at the door, and heard all.

The day for the Communion came; the church of St. Simeon was crowded.  Vaninka came to kneel at the railing of the choir.  Behind her was her father and his aides-de-camp, and behind them their servants.

Arina was also in the church with her mother.  The inquisitive child wished to see Vaninka, whose name she had heard pronounced that terrible night, when her father had failed in the first and most sacred of the duties imposed on a priest.  While her mother was praying, she left her chair and glided among the worshippers, nearly as far as the railing.

But when she had arrived there, she was stopped by the group of the general’s servants.  But Arina had not come so far to be, stopped so easily:  she tried to push between them, but they opposed her; she persisted, and one of them pushed her roughly back.  The child fell, struck her head against a seat, and got up bleeding and crying, “You are very proud for a slave.  Is it because you belong to the great lady who burnt the Red House?”