Immediately after her
marriage her father died, leaving her in possession of an ample fortune,
which, with my father's own wealth, placed them among the richest and
most influential in Petersburg.
"Among my father's most intimate friends was Baron Xavier Oberg--who, at
that time, held a very subordinate position in the Ministry of the
Interior--and from my earliest recollections I can remember him coming
frequently to our house and being invited to the brilliant
entertainments which my mother gave. When I was thirteen, however, my
father died of a chill contracted while boar-hunting on his estate in
Kiev, and within a few months a further disaster happened to us. One
night, while I was sitting alone reading aloud to my mother, two
strangers were announced, and on being shown in they arrested my dear
mother on a charge of complicity in a revolutionary plot against the
Czar which had been discovered at Peterhof. I stood defiant and
indignant, for my mother was certainly no Nihilist, yet they said that
the bomb had been introduced into the palace by the Countess Anna
Shiproff, one of the ladies-in-waiting, who was an intimate friend of my
mother's and often used to visit her.
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