are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said nothing to us about it.”
“ ‘No barrier bars a Russian’s path’—we’ll go!” shouted Pétya.
“But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,” said Nikoláy to Natásha.
“Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,” said Natásha decisively. “Danílo, tell them to saddle for us, and Mikháilo must come with my dogs,” she added to the huntsman.
It seemed to Danílo irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible.
He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on the young lady.
IV
The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son’s care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out with the others.
In an hour’s time the whole hunting party was at the porch. Nikoláy, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no time for attending to trifles, went past Natásha and Pétya who were trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the quarry, mounted his chestnut Donéts, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the Otrádnoe wood. The old count’s horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyánka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was to drive