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 that I felt ill at ease. And then that portrait of me which he painted so well; but, above all, his gentle and melancholy look. Yes, yes, it must be so," Kitty repeated with horror. "No, it cannot be, it must not be! He is to be pitied so!" she added, in her secret heart.

This suspicion poisoned the pleasure of her new life.

CHAPTER XXXIV

before their season at the Spa was over. Prince Shcherbatsky rejoined them. He had been to Carlsbad, to Baden, and to Kissingen, with Russian friends,—"to get a breath of Russian air," as he expressed it.

The prince and princess had conflicting ideas in regard to living abroad. The princess thought that everything was lovely; and, notwithstanding her assured position in Russian society, while she was abroad she put on the airs of a European lady which she was not, for she was in every way a genuine Russian baruinya. The prince, on the other hand, considered everything abroad detestable, and the European life unendurable; and he even exaggerated his Russian characteristics, and tried to be less of a European than he really was.

He came back emaciated and with drooping sacks under his eyes, but in the happiest spirits; and his happy frame of mind was still further enhanced when he found that Kitty was on the road to health.

The accounts that he heard of Kitty's intimacy with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the princess's description of the moral transformation through which his daughter was passing, rather vexed the prince, awaking in him that feeling of jealousy which he always had in regard to everything that might draw Kitty away from under his influence. He was afraid that she might ascend to regions unattainable to him. But these disagreeable presentiments were swallowed up in the sea of gayety and good humor which he always carried with him, and which his sojourn at Carlsbad had increased.

The day after his arrival, the prince, in his long pale-