rself to read
when the footman came in again. "Madame Borozdina? Tell her,
tomorrow at two o'clock. Yes," she said, putting her finger in
the place in the book, and gazing before her with her fine
pensive eyes, "that is how true faith acts. You know Marie
Sanina? You know about her trouble? She lost her only child.
She was in despair. And what happened? She found this
comforter, and she thanks God now for the death of her child.
Such is the happiness faith brings!"

"Oh, yes, that is most..." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, glad they
were going to read, and let him have a chance to collect his
faculties. "No, I see I'd better not ask her about anything
today," he thought. "If only I can get out of this without
putting my foot in it!"

"It will be dull for you," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
addressing Landau; "you don't know English, but it's short."

"Oh, I shall understand," said Landau, with the same smile, and
he closed his eyes. Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna
exchanged meaningful glances, and the reading began.

Chapter 22

Stepan Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange
talk which he was hearing for the first time. The complexity of
Petersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousing
him out of his Moscow stagnation. But he liked these
complications, and understood them only in the circles he knew
and was at home in. In these unfamiliar surroundings he was
puzzled and disconcerted, and could not get his bearings. As he
listened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful,
artless--or perhaps artful, he could not decide which--eyes of
Landau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious
of a peculiar heaviness in his head.

The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. "Marie
Sanina is glad her child's dead.... How good a smoke would be
now!... To be saved, one need only believe, and the monks
don't know how the thing's to be done, but Countess Lidia
Ivanovna does know.... And why is my head so heavy? Is it the
cognac, or all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I've done
nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won't do to ask her
now. They say they make one say one's prayers. I only hope
they won't make me! That'll be too imbecile. And what stuff it
is she's reading! but she has a good accent. Landau--Bezzubov--
what's he Bezzubov for?" All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became
aware that his lower jaw was unco