Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 2
was her father’s favorite, and she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now
her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he
saw right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing within
her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he only patted
her hair and said:
“These stupid chignons! There’s no getting at the real daughter. One simply
strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,” he turned to his elder daughter,
“what’s your young buck about, hey?”
“Nothing, father,” answered Dolly, understanding that her husband was meant.
“He’s always out; I scarcely ever see him,” she could not resist adding with a sarcastic
smile.
“Why, hasn’t he gone into the country yet–to see about selling that forest?”
“No, he’s still getting ready for the journey.”
“Oh, that’s it!” said the prince. “And so am I to be getting ready for a journey
too? At your service,” he said to his wife, sitting down. “And I tell you what, Katia,”
he went on to his younger daughter, “you must wake up one fine day and say to
yourself: Why, I’m quite well, and merry, and going out again with father for an
early morning walk in the frost. Hey?”
What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty became confused
and overcome like a detected criminal. “Yes, he sees it all, he understands it
all, and in these words he’s telling me that though I’m ashamed, I must get over my
shame.” She could not pluck up spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and
all at once burst into tears, and rushed out of the room.
“See what comes of your jokes!” the princess pounced down on her husband.
“You’re always...” she began a string of reproaches.
The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a long while without speaking,
but his face was more and more frowning.
“She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and you don’t feel
how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken
in people!” said the princess, and by the change in her tone both Dolly and the prince
knew she was speaking of Vronsky. “I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such
base, dishonorable people.”
“Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!” said the prince gloomily, getting up from his low
chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the doorway. “There are
laws, madam, and since you’ve challenged me to it, I’ll tell you who’s to blame for it
all: you and you, you and nobody else. Laws against such young gallants there have
always been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have
been, old as I am, I’d have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and
now you physic her and call in these quacks.”
The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the princess heard
his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did on serious
occasions.
“Alexander, Alexander,” she whispered, moving to him and beginning to weep.
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