"Oh, but how was it? You loved him, anyway, before you were allowed to speak?" Kitty felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her mother on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest in a woman's life.

"Of course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country.

" "But how was it settled between you, mamma?" "You imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new? It's always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles..." "How nicely you said that, mamma! It's just by the eyes, by smiles that it's done," Dolly assented.

"But what words did he say?" "What did Kostya say to you?" "He wrote it in chalk.

It was wonderful....