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24 “Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that…. In another four years… then I will ask for your hand.”

Natásha considered.

“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”

A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.

“Settled!” replied Borís.

“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”

She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining sitting room. :CHAPTER XIV her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came “to congratulate.” The countess wished to have a tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.

“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “There are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your friendship.”

Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her friend’s hand.

“Véra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a favorite, “how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or…”

The handsome Véra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.

“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied as she rose to go to her own room.

But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sónya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever written. Borís and Natásha were at the other window and ceased talking when Véra entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at Véra with guilty, happy faces.

It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Véra.

“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.

“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.

“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Véra. “You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of you.”

Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in her hand.

“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natásha and Borís, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”

“Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense, speaking very gently.

She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to everyone.

“Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”

“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer. “We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”

“I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with Borís.”

“Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I have nothing to complain of.”

“Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,” said Natásha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Véra, “You’ll never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname, bestowed on Véra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please,” she finished quickly.

“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors…”

“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the nursery.”

All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.