there was an order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would
serve her as before and obey her in everything.
At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,
Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the
maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the
cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
away, and the women in the house began to wail.
"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved voices as
Rostov passed through the anteroom.
Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting
room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why
he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian
face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a
man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and
began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This
meeting immediately struck Rostov as a romantic event. "A helpless girl
overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants!
And what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there
are in her features and expression!" thought he as he looked at her and
listened to her timid story.
When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her
father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away, and then, as if
fearing he might take her words as meant to move him to pity, looked at
him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostov's
eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at him with that
radiant look which caused the plainness of her face to be forgotten.
"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here
and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov, rising. "Go
when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare
to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort."
And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood, he moved toward
the door.
Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would
consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to
take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.
Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.
"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope it
was all a misunderstand
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