Grisha goes. The women open their newspapers.
Sofia Alexandrovna takes up the Rech and scans it rapidly, occasionally mentioning something that has attracted her notice.
Natasha is looking over Slovo. She reads silently, slowly, and attentively.
Elena Kirillovna has the Russkiya Vedomosti. She tears the wrapper open slowly and spreads the entire sheet on the table. She reads on, quickly running her eyes over the lines.
XXX
Groaning, the old nurse slowly ascends the steps. Sofia Alexandrovna pauses from her reading a moment and looks with fear at the old woman. Natasha gives a nervous start and turns away. Elena Kirillovna reads on calmly, without looking at the nurse.
The nurse sighs, sits down on the bench at the entrance, and asks in a monotone the one and the same question that she asks each day:
“And how many folk are there in this morning’s paper that’s been ordered to die? And how many are there that’s been hanged?”
Sofia Alexandrovna drops the paper, and suddenly rising, very pale, looks upon the old woman. She is quivering from head to foot. Elena Kirillovna, folding the paper, pushes it aside and looks straight before her with arrested eyes. Natasha rises; she turns her face, which has suddenly grown pale, toward the old woman, and utters in a kind of wooden voice that does not seem like her own:
“In Ekaterinoslav—seven; in Moscow—one.”