has been used to, to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her condition! It’s very hard.”
Prince Andréy smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at those we think we thoroughly understand.
“You live in the country and don’t think the life terrible,” he replied.
“I … that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want any other life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think, André: for a young society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her life, all alone—for Papa is always busy, and I … well, you know what poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne. …”
“I don’t like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all,” said Prince Andréy.
“No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much to be pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t need her, and she’s even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am even more so. I like being alone. … Father likes her very much. She and Mikháil Ivánovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: ‘We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she was homeless after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and