she to Natásha, “is Mimi a relation of yours? A daughter, I suppose?”
Natásha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension to childish things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Borís, the officer, Anna Mikháylovna’s son; Nikoláy, the undergraduate, the count’s eldest son; Sónya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece, and little Pétrusha, his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces.
Evidently in the back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the drawing room talk of society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apráksina. Now and then they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
The two