“Once rheumatic, always rheumatic, I fear,” he replied. “To some extent it depends on the weather, though not so much as people are apt to think.”

‘Stand off!’ cried Nicholas, letting loose all the passion he had restrained till now; ‘if this is what I scarcely dare to hope it is, you are caught, villains, in your own toils.’

And so it was: in Sonya`s place sat Natasha who had just come in noiselessly.