Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy had known my mother from his childhood and
was a friend of hers, though he was two and a half years younger. Now
and then on his way to Moscow he used to pay a visit to our family. His
father, Count Nikolai Ilitch Tolstoy was very friendly with my
grandfather, Alexander Mikhailovich Islenev, and they used to visit each
other at the village Krasnoye and the hamlet Yasnaya Polyana. In August,
1862, my mother took us girls to see our grandfather at the village of
Ivitsi in Odoevski, and on our way we stopped at Yasnaya Polyana which
my mother had not seen since she was a child; at the time my mother's
greatest friend, Marie Nikolaevna Tolstoy, was staying there, having
just returned from Algiers.{15}
On our way back Leo Nikolaevich accompanied us as far as Moscow, and he
used to come and see us almost daily at our country-house in
Pokrovskoye, and afterwards in Moscow. On the evening of 16 September he
handed me a written proposal of marriage.{16} Up to that time no one
knew the object of his visits.{17} There was a painful struggle going on
in his soul. In his diary at the time he wrote, for instance: