Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 2
Chapter 2
SOON after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be a consultation
that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement (she had
another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and
anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and
hear Kitty’s fate, which was to be decided that day.
“Well, well?” she said, coming into the drawing room, without taking off her hat.
“You’re all in good spirits. Good news, then?”
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though the
doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible
to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it was settled they
should go abroad.
Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going away. And
her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their
reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented turned out
to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the
same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly
ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually
tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies
of jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived
through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of infidelities could
never now affect her as it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only
mean breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and
still more herself, for the weakness. Besides this, the care of her large family was a
constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the
nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.
“Well, how are all of you?” asked her mother.
“Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I’m afraid it’s
scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up
entirely, if–God forbid–it should be scarlatina.”
The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor’s departure, and
after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few words to her, he turned to his
wife:
“How have you settled it? you’re going? Well, and what do you mean to do with
me?”
“I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander,” said his wife.
“That’s as you like.”
“Mamma, why shouldn’t father come with us?” said Kitty. “It would be nicer for
him and for us too.”
The old prince got up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She lifted her head and looked at
him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he understood her better than
anyone in the family, though he did not say much about her. Being the youngest, she
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