with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery. … But at the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her ears. Dunyásha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.
“Come to your Papa at once, please!” said she with a strange, excited look. “A misfortune … about Pyotr Ilýnich … a letter,” she finished with a sob.
II
Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natásha was feeling a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of them—her father, mother, and Sónya—were so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard Dunyásha’s words about Pyotr Ilýnich and a misfortune, but did not grasp them.