BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
1. CHAPTER I
(continued)
"You don't at all understand," she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem
at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.
She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This
amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship
skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially
as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him
that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.
"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his
surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her
soul she too had doubts about this marriage.
"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His
health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach
importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through
the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every
time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that
everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He
is an excellent man!"
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