“No, wait a bit. … Oh, how funny you look!” cried Nikoláy, peering into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. “Natásha, it’s magical, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You have done splendidly.”
“Had I seen her before as she is now,” thought Nikoláy, “I should long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, and all would have been well.”
“So you are glad and I have done right?”
“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it. Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of Sónya, for there is nothing but good in her.”
“Then it’s all right?” said Nikoláy, again scrutinizing the expression of his sister’s face to see if she was in earnest. Then he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian was Sónya, and that Sónya was certainly his future happy and loving wife.
When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the evening at the Melyukóvs’, the girls went to their bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natásha’s table stood two looking glasses which Dunyásha had prepared beforehand.