ed at Aglaya for five minutes at a time, without
taking his eyes off her face; but his expression was very strange;
he would gaze at her as though she were an object a couple of miles
distant, or as though he were looking at her portrait and not at herself
at all.

"Why do you look at me like that, prince?" she asked suddenly, breaking
off her merry conversation and laughter with those about her. "I'm
afraid of you! You look as though you were just going to put out
your hand and touch my face to see if it's real! Doesn't he, Evgenie
Pavlovitch--doesn't he look like that?"

The prince seemed surprised that he should have been addressed at all;
he reflected a moment, but did not seem to take in what had been said
to him; at all events, he did not answer. But observing that she and
the others had begun to laugh, he too opened his mouth and laughed with
them.

The laughter became general, and the young officer, who seemed a
particularly lively sort of person, simply shook with mirth.

Aglaya suddenly whispered angrily to herself the word--

"Idiot!"

"My goodness--surely she is not in love with such a--surely she isn't
mad!" groaned Mrs. Epanchin, under her breath.

"It's all a joke, mamma; it's just a joke like the 'poor
knight'--nothing more whatever, I assure you!" Alexandra whispered
in her ear. "She is chaffing him--making a fool of him, after her
own private fashion, that's all! But she carries it just a little
too far--she is a regular little actress. How she frightened us just
now--didn't she?--and all for a lark!"

"Well, it's lucky she has happened upon an idiot, then, that's all I
can say!" whispered Lizabetha Prokofievna, who was somewhat comforted,
however, by her daughter's remark.

The prince had heard himself referred to as "idiot," and had shuddered
at the moment; but his shudder, it so happened, was not caused by the
word applied to him. The fact was that in the crowd, not far from where
lie was sitting, a pale familiar face, with curly black hair, and a
well-known smile and expression, had flashed across his vision for a
moment, and disappeared again. Very likely he had imagined it! There
only remained to him the impression of a strange smile, two eyes, and
a bright green tie. Whether the man had disappeared among the crowd, or
whether he had turned towards the Vauxhall, the prince could not say.

But a moment or two afterwards he began to glance keenly about him. That
first vision might only