say this; but the princess knew well that in this familiar intercourse her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with some one who would not dream of marrying her, or would not make her a good husband. However earnestly they suggested to the princess that in our time young people ought to settle their own destinies, she found it impossible to agree with them any more than she could believe in the advisability of allowing the four-year-old children of our time to have loaded pistols as their favorite toys. And so the princess felt much more solicitude about Kitty than she had felt about either of her other daughters.
She feared now that Vronsky would content himself with playing the gallant. She saw that Kitty was already in love with him, but she consoled herself with the thought that he was a man of honor and would not do so; but, at the same time, she knew how easy it was, with the new freedom allowed in society, to turn a young girl's head, and how lightly men as a general thing regarded this.
The week before Kitty had told her mother of a conversation which she had held with Vronsky during a mazurka. This conversation had partially relieved the princess's mind, though it did not absolutely satisfy her. Vronsky told Kitty that he and his brother were both so used to letting their mother decide things for them, that they never undertook anything of importance without consulting her.
"And now I am looking for my mother's arrival from Petersburg as a great piece of good fortune," he had said.
Kitty reported these words without attaching any importance to them, but her mother understood them very differently. She knew that the old countess was expected from day to day; she knew that the old countess would be satisfied with her son's choice; and it was strange to her that he had not offered himself, as if he feared to offend his mother. However, she herself was so anxious for this match, and above all for relief from her anxieties, that she gave a favorable interpretation to these words. Bitterly as she felt the unhappiness of her
