“Your offer …” the countess began at last, sedately. He sat silent, looking into her face. “Your offer” … (she hesitated in confusion) “is agreeable to us, and … I accept your offer. I am glad of it. And my husband … I hope … but it must rest with herself …”

“I will speak to her, when I have received your consent.…Do you give it me?” said Prince Andrey.

“Yes,” said the countess, and she held out her hand to him, and with mingled feelings of aversion and tenderness she pressed her lips to his forehead as he bent to kiss her hand. Her wish was to love him as a son; but she felt that he was a man alien to her, and that she was afraid of him.

“I am sure my husband will consent,” said the countess; “but your father …”

“My father, whom I have informed of my plans, has made it an express condition that the marriage should not take place for a year. That too, I meant to speak of to you,” said Prince Andrey.

“It is true that Natasha is very young, but—so long as that?”

“It could not be helped,” said Prince Andrey with a sigh.

“I will send her to you,” said the countess, and she went out of the room.

“Lord, have mercy upon us!” she kept repeating as she looked for her daughter.

Sonya told her that Natasha was in her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, with a pale face and dry eyes; she was gazing at the holy picture, and murmuring something to herself as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she leaped up and flew towards her.

“Well, mamma, … well?”

“Go, go to him. He asks your hand,” said the countess, coldly it seemed to Natasha.…“Yes … go …” the mother murmured mournfully and reproachfully with a deep sigh as her daughter ran off.

Natasha could not have said how she reached the drawing-room. As she entered the door and caught sight of him, she stopped short: “Is it possible that this stranger has now become everything to me?” she asked herself, and instantly answered: “Yes, everything: he alone is dearer to me now than everything in the world.” Prince Andrey approached her with downcast eyes.

“I have loved you from the first minute I saw you. Can I hope?”

He glanced at her and was struck by the serious, impassioned look in her face. Her face seemed to say: “Why ask? Why doubt of what you cannot but know? Why talk when no words can express what one feels?”

She came nearer to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, yes,” said Natasha, almost angrily it seemed. She drew a deep sigh, and another, her breathing came more and more quickly, and she burst into sobs.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I am so happy,” she answered, smiling through her tears. She bent over closer to him, thought a second, as though wondering whether it were possible, and then kissed him.

Prince Andrey held her hands, looked into her eyes and could find no trace of his former love for her in his heart. Some sudden reaction seemed to have taken place in his soul; there was none of the poetic


  By PanEris using Melati.

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