There was the sister-in-law with the square-cut bodice, who occasioned in him a feeling akin to shame and repentance caused by the commission of a bad action. 

The landowner with the grey moustache was evidentlys an inveterate believer in serfdom, and a passionate farmer who had lived long in the country. 

Levin saw signs of this in the the way the man was dressed—he wore an old-fashioned shiny coat which he was evidently not used to—and in his intelligent, dismal eyes, his well-turned Russian, his authoritative tone, evidently acquired by long practice, and in the firm movement of his fine large sunburnt hands, the right one having an old wedding-ring on the third finger. 

Though her bosom was so white, or perhaps because it was so white, this square-cut deprived Levin of his freedom of though. He imagined probably quite mistakenly that the bodice was cut like that on his account; he felt that he had not right to look on it and tried not to do so but felt guilty because it was cut so. 

He had not full freedom of thought because he felt painfully uncomfortable. This painful discomfort was due to the fact that Sviyazhsky’s sister-in-law sat opposite to him in a dress that seemed to him to have been put on especially for his benefit, with a particularly low, square-cut decolletage showing her white bosom. 

Each time that Levin tried to penetrate deeper than the reception rooms of the other’s mind, which were always open to anybody, he noticed Sviyazhsky seemed a little confused. A just perceptible look of fear appeared on his face, as if he were afraid that he would be understood by Levin, whom he met with good-natured, jocose resistance. 

Levin tried but could not understand him, and regarded him and his life as animated riddles. 

Sviyazhsky was one of those people—they invariably amazed Levin—whose judgement was very logical though never original and was kept quite apart from their conduct, while their manner of life was very definite and stable, its tendency being quite independent of their judgment, and even clashing with it. 

At the bottom of his heart he wanted to put himself to the test and again estimate his feelings for Sviyazksky’s sister-in-law.