her look should not be
noticed. After dinner Sergey Ivanovitch sat with his cup of
coffee at the drawing-room window, and while he took part in a
conversation he had begun with his brother, he watched the door
through which the children would start on the mushroom-picking
expedition. Levin was sitting in the window near his brother.

Kitty stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the end of a
conversation that had no interest for her, in order to tell him
something.

"You have changed in many respects since your marriage, and for
the better," said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling to Kitty, and
obviously little interested in the conversation, "but you have
remained true to your passion for defending the most paradoxical
theories."

"Katya, it's not good for you to stand," her husband said to her,
putting a chair for her and looking significantly at her.

"Oh, and there's no time either," added Sergey Ivanovitch, seeing
the children running out.

At the head of them all Tanya galloped sideways, in her tightly-
drawn stockings, and waving a basket and Sergey Ivanovitch's hat,
she ran straight up to him.

Boldly running up to Sergey Ivanovitch with shining eyes, so like
her father's fine eyes, she handed him his hat and made as though
she would put it on for him, softening her freedom by a shy and
friendly smile.

"Varenka's waiting," she said, carefully putting his hat on,
seeing from Sergey Ivanovitch's smile that she might do so.

Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown,
with a white kerchief on her head.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, Varvara Andreevna," said Sergey
Ivanovitch, finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their
separate pockets his handkerchief and cigar-case.

"And how sweet my Varenka is! eh?" said Kitty to her husband, as
soon as Sergey Ivanovitch rose. She spoke so that Sergey
Ivanovitch could hear, and it was clear that she meant him to do
so. "And how good-looking she is--such a refined beauty!
Varenka!" Kitty shouted. "Shall you be in the mill copse? We'll
come out to you."

"You certainly forget your condition, Kitty," said the old
princess, hurriedly coming out at the door. "You mustn't shout
like that."

Varenka, hearing Kitty's voice and her mother's reprimand, went
with light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her
movement, her flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that
something out of the common was going on in her. Kitty knew wh