I got up nervous and excited. The whole morning I had been in a fever; my hands were as cold as ice and my cheeks burned like fire. How slowly the hours did pass! When Serge Michailovitch was announced I went hot all over, and my emotion was so uncontrollable that I fled into my room, in which I felt more safe. My cousin Nathaly dragged me out by force and the next minute we came face to face, Serge Michailovitch and I. The first step was made, we mounted our horses and set off at a trot; soon after we walked them slowly, riding side by side. For some time we did not exchange a word, then suddenly Serge Michailovitch put his arm round me and drew me towards him till our lips met; he told me then that he loved me and asked me if I cared enough for him to become his wife. I only answered with my eyes, which spoke the plainest “yes,” and thus, under the open sky, we pledged our troth, for a minute forgetting everything but our two selves. I gave him with happiness the gift of myself. Nothing could shake my faith in him now. For me that day marked the red-letter day of my calendar. I rode back to Tiflis an engaged girl, and announced our betrothal to mamma; I longed to inform the world at large of it. Our betrothal was made known the next day, and hearty were the congratulations addressed to us. I wrote to my father to ask for his consent and blessing, which he gave with pleasure. Our wedding was to take place at Dolgik in the beginning of April. Serge Michailovitch, Sergy as I called him now, spent a good deal of his time with me; we used to pass all our evenings together in the library, where we contrived a sort of recess, furnished with a sofa, in which we could talk in peace. Nothing will ever make me forget the hours we passed together, hours which were all but too brief for us; we forgot that clocks existed. Dear days! so long ago, yet so vivid to me! We sat on the sofa with our heads very close together, pretending to read out of a book that lay on my lap face downwards. One evening as I sat thus, side by side with Sergy, my hand imprisoned in his, developing our plans for our future happiness, the footsteps of my uncle Staritzki recalled us to reality. Seeing that I held my book upside down, uncle went to fetch a venerable calf-bound volume containing the code of laws, and gave it to me saying laughingly that, perhaps we should be more interested with that sort of literature. I was the happiest girl on earth; it was so good to feel that Sergy cared for me! He became my world, my all. I was no longer the same girl I had been, my time of playing with the sentiments of men was over; surely there were two _Vava Galitzines_: one that had been blessed with the happy faculty of dismissing one love from her mind the moment that she began to occupy herself with another, and one who, in spite of her frivolous outside, loved only one man in the world—her Sergy!