It can't be helped!" He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture.

Anna Pavlovna meditated.
"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole ?" she asked.

"They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who is very unhappy with her father.

She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya." Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head that he was considering this information.
"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year?
And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in five years, if he goes on like this ?" Presently he added: "That's what we fathers have to put up with....

Is this princess of yours rich ?" "Her father is very rich and stingy.