"You say that my husband does not take an interest in Russian affairs?" she asked. "On the contrary, he was happy when he was abroad, but not so happy as he is here. Here he feels that he is in his sphere. He has so much to do, and he has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh! you have not been to see our school, have you?"
"Yes, I have,—that little house covered with ivy?"
"Yes; that is Nastia's work," said she, glancing at her sister.
"Do you yourself teach?" asked Levin, trying to look at Nastia's face, but feeling that, in spite of himself, he would see the low corsage.
"Yes, I teach, and intend to keep on teaching; but we have an excellent schoolmistress. And we have gymnastics."
"No, thank you, I will not take any more tea," said Levin. He felt that he was committing a solecism; but he could not keep up the conversation, and he rose in confusion. "I am very much interested in what they are saying," he added, and went to the other end of the table, where the host was talking with the two landed proprietors. Sviazhsky was sitting with his side toward the table, twirling his cup around with one hand, and with the other stroking his long beard, lifting it up to his nose and dropping it again as if he were smelling of it. His bright black eyes were fixed with keen amusement on one of the proprietors, a man with a white mustache, who was complaining bitterly about the peasantry. Levin saw that Sviazhsky had an answer ready for the worthy gentleman's comical complaints, and could reduce his arguments to powder if his official position did not compel him to respect the proprietor's.
The proprietor with the white mustache was evidently a narrow-minded country gentleman, an inveterate opponent of the emancipation, and an old-style farmer. Levin could see the signs of it in his old-fashioned, shiny coat, in his keen, angry eyes, in his well balanced Russian speech, in his authoritative, slow, and studied
