Coffee, letters, and the children

Dressed and scented, Oblonsky goes down to coffee and his letters. One is unwelcome: a dealer wants to buy the forest on Dolly's estate, and the sale cannot go through until they are reconciled, which taints the reconciliation with money. He reads his Liberal paper, whose opinions he holds the way he wears the current cut of hat, and enjoys the hits made at the Ministry. Tanya and Grisha are heard outside, upsetting a box that stands for a train; he calls them in, favours Tanya without meaning to, asks after their mother and is caught out in the pretence when Tanya blushes for him. He gives them two sweets from the mantelpiece. Downstairs he hears out Kalinin's widow, petitioning for something absurd, with perfect politeness. Then, taking his hat, he finds he has forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget, and goes to Dolly's door.

Tolstoy builds Stiva out of his appetites and then lets the moral test arrive through a child. Tanya's blush at her father's pretence is the chapter's real event, and it works because everything before it is comfort. The forest sale is planted here and will still be unresolved four parts later.