-though by force of habit she greeted him
with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting
for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with another
customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear, but that
you give it to me, an old woman..."--yet it was evident that she was
not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it diverted her
attention from the unfinished game.

She finished her game of patience and only then examined the presents.
They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid workmanship, a
bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with
a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's portrait on the lid which
Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in Petersburg. The countess had
long wished for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she
glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention chiefly to
the box for cards.

"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back--for I never saw
anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are we
to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn't see
anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on, repeating her usual
phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her companion, "see what
a box for cards my son has brought us!"

Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.

Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had much to
talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess--not
that anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so
far behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her
presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to
repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was
dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to
remember--yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from
habit, and Pierre answered the countess' questions as to whether Prince
Vasili had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings
and still thought of them, and other matters that interested no one and
to which she herself was indifferent.

Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
continued all through teatime. All the grown-u