`Varenka's waiting,' she said, carefully putting his hat on, seeing from Sergei Ivanovich's smile that she might do so.

Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown, with a white kerchief on her head.

`I'm coming, I'm coming, Varvara Andreevna,' said Sergei Ivanovich, finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their separate pockets his handkerchief and cigar case.

`And how sweet my Varenka is! Eh?' said Kitty to her husband, as soon as Sergei Ivanovich rose. She spoke so that Sergei Ivanovich could hear, and it was clear that she meant him to do so. `And how good- looking she is - such a refined beauty! Varenka!' Kitty shouted. `Shall you be in the mill forest? We'll come out to you.'

`You certainly forget your condition, Kitty,' said the old Princess, hurriedly coming out at the door. `You mustn't shout like that.'

Varenka, hearing Kitty's voice and her mother's reprimand, went with light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her movement, her flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of the common was going on in her. Kitty knew what this thing was and had been watching her intently. She called Varenka at that moment merely in order mentally to give her a blessing for the important event which, as Kitty fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the forest.

`Varenka, I should be very happy if a certain something were to happen,' she whispered as she kissed her.

`And are you coming with us?' Varenka said to Levin in confusion, pretending not to have heard what had been said.

`I am coming, but only as far as the threshing floor, and there I shall stop.'

`Why, what do you want there?' said Kitty.

`I must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to make my calculations,' said Levin; `and where will you be?'

`On the terrace.'