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Before six months had passed, the lady had become, so attached to her that she promoted her to the post of housekeeper, and confided all the domestic arrangements to her care. Thus Agafia came back into power, and again became fair and plump. Her mistress trusted her implicitly. So passed five more years. Then misfortune came a second time on Agafia.
It is easy to work upon a Russian's fears and to secure his attachment, but it is difficult to acquire his esteem; that he will not readily give, nor will he give it to every one. But the whole household esteemed Agafia. No one even so much as remembered her former faults; it was as if they had been buried in the grave with her old master.
At her feet Liza would be sitting on a little stool, also engaged in some work, or, her clear eyes uplifted with a serious expression, listening to what Agafia was telling her. Agafia never told her nursery tales. With a calm and even voice, she used to tell her about the life of the Blessed Virgin, or the lives of the hermits and people pleasing to God, or about the holy female martyrs.
When she was dissatisfied about anything, she merely kept silence, and Liza always understood that silence. With a child's quick instinct, she also knew well when Agafia was dissatisfied with others, whether it were with Maria Dmitrievna or with Kalitine himself. For rather more than three years Agafia waited upon Liza.
On the Meissner Hills great fluttering flames blazed up into the sky; their reflection shone into the river, and upon the old man's face. And now, close beside me upon the bridge, there began to be audible a sort of plashing and splashing, and I saw a dim form climbing up arduously, and presently swing itself over the balustrade with marvellous dexterity. "Agafia?" the old man cried. "Girl!
Agafia treated her to such a cool dish of rich cream, behaved herself so modestly, and looked so clean, so happy, so contented with every thing, that her mistress informed her that she was pardoned, and allowed her to return into the house.
She would tell Liza how the saints lived in the deserts; how they worked out their salvation, enduring hunger and thirst; and how they did not fear kings, but confessed Christ; and how the birds of the air brought them food, and the wild beasts obeyed them; how from those spots where their blood had fallen flowers sprang up. It was Agafia, also, who taught her to pray.
Agafia immediately made herself at home in her new position, just as if she had never led a different kind of life. Her complexion grew fairer, her figure became more rounded, and her arms, under their muslin sleeves, showed "white as wheat-flour," like those of a wealthy tradesman's wife.
After that Agafia, although she had ceased to attend Liza, remained for some time longer in the house, and often saw her pupil, and treated her as she had been used to do. But when Marfa Timofeevna entered the Kalitines' house, Agafia did not get on well with her. Agafia obtained leave to go on a pilgrimage, and she never came back.
But Anselmus gave a strange smile and said, "Agafia got away; and, alter the Peace was signed, I received, from her own hands, a beautiful white wedding-cake of her own making." The reticence of Anselmus was proof against every effort to induce him to say anything more concerning this astonishing affair.
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