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The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags

on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good

humor was even greater when he saw Kitty completely recovered.

The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and

the reports the princess gave him of some kind of change she had

noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual

feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter away

from him, and a dread that his daughter might have got out of the

reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But

these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of

kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and more

so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.

The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with

his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched

collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest

good humor.