Like all the women of distinction in her nation, Vaninka was a good musician, and spoke French, Italian, German, and English equally well.

Her features had developed in harmony with her character.  Vaninka was beautiful, but her beauty was perhaps a little too decided.  Her large black eyes, straight nose, and lips curling scornfully at the corners, impressed those who saw her for the first time somewhat unpleasantly.  This impression soon wore off with her superiors and equals, to whom she became merely an ordinary charming woman, whilst to subalterns and such like she remained haughty and inaccessible as a goddess.  At seventeen Vaninka’s education was finished, and her governess who had suffered in health through the severe climate of St. Petersburg, requested permission to leave.  This desire was granted with the ostentatious recognition of which the Russian nobility are the last representatives in Europe.  Thus Vaninka was left alone, with nothing but her father’s blind adoration to direct her.  She was his only daughter, as we have mentioned, and he thought her absolutely perfect.

Things were in this state in the-general’s house when he received a letter, written on the deathbed of one of the friends of his youth.  Count Romayloff had been exiled to his estates, as a result of some quarrel with Potemkin, and his career had been spoilt.  Not being able to recover his forfeited position, he had settled down about four hundred leagues from St. Petersburg; broken-hearted, distressed probably less on account of his own exile and misfortune than of the prospects of his only son, Foedor.  The count feeling that he was leaving this son alone and friendless in the world, commended the young man, in the name of their early friendship, to the general, hoping that, owing to his being a favourite with Paul I, he would be able to procure a lieutenancy in a regiment for him.  The general immediately replied to the count that his son should find a second father in himself; but when this comforting message arrived, Romayloff was no more, and Foedor himself received the letter and carried it back with him to the general, when he went to tell him of his loss and to claim the promised protection.  So great was the general’s despatch, that Paul I, at his request, granted the young man a sub-lieutenancy in the Semonowskoi regiment, so that Foedor entered on his duties the very next day after his arrival in St. Petersburg.

Although the young man had only passed through the general’s house on his way to the barracks, which were situated in the Litenoi quarter, he had remained there long enough for him to have seen Vaninka, and she had produced a great impression upon him.  Foedor had arrived with his heart full of primitive and noble feelings; his gratitude to his protector, who had opened a career for him, was profound, and extended to all his family.  These feelings caused him perhaps to have an exaggerated idea of the beauty of the young girl who was presented to him as a sister, and who, in spite of this title, received him with the frigidity and hauteur of a queen.  Nevertheless, her appearance, in spite of her cool and freezing manner, had left a lasting impression upon the young man’s heart, and his arrival in St. Petersburg had been marked by feelings till then never experienced before in his life.