aylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be ready
to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.

"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."

Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they--friends from childhood--had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.

CHAPTER XVIII

Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.
From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le terrible
dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common
sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the
Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both cities
wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told good
stories about her, while none the less all without exception respected
and feared her.

In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of war
that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the recruiting. None
of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared.
The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were smoking and
talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head first to one
side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident pleasure
and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he egged on
against each other.

One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled
face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable
young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor,
Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a man with "a sharp tongue" as they
said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to his companion.
The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards, irreproachably washed,
brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with
red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting it escape from his ha