ke!"

"Of course not!"

"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But,
my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other, the
blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."

"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the simplicity
of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so pleasant to
himself might not be pleasant to someone else.

"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!" thought
Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange a
match... and Sonya...?" And on taking leave of the governor's wife,
when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!" he drew her
aside.

"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."

"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.

Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate
thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or
his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards
recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which
had very important results for him, it seemed to him--as it seems to
everyone in such cases--that it was merely some silly whim that seized
him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other trifling events,
had immense consequences for him and for all his family.

"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but the
very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."

"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.

"But Princess Bolkonskaya--that's another matter. I will tell you the
truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to her; and
then, after I met her under such circumstances--so strangely, the idea
often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you remember that
Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never happened to meet her
before, somehow it had always happened that we did not meet. And as long
as my sister Natasha was engaged to her brother it was of course out of
the question for me to think of marrying her. And it must needs happen
that I should meet her just when Natasha's engagement had been broken
off... and then everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone
and never will, only to you."

The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.

"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her, and
will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said