Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 17
“I’m telling him to come to dinner. I’ve one lady extra to dinner with me, and no
man to take her in. Look what I’ve said, will that persuade him? Excuse me, I must
leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?” she said from
the door; “I have to give some directions.”
Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy’s letter, and,
without reading it, wrote below: “It’s essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede
garden. I shall be there at six o’clock.” She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in
her presence handed the note to be taken.
At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little drawing room,
the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya before the arrival of her visitors really
did come off between the two women. They criticized the people they were expecting,
and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova.
“She’s very sweet, and I always liked her,” said Anna.
“You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me after
the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you’re a real heroine of
romance, and that if she were a man she would do all sorts of mad things for your
sake. Stremov says she does that as it is.”
“But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,” said Anna, after being silent for
some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not asking an idle question, but
that what she was asking was of more importance to her than it should have been;
“do tell me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he’s
called? I’ve met them so little. What does it mean?”
Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.
“It’s a new manner,” she said. “They’ve all adopted that manner. They’ve flung
their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and ways of flinging them.”
“Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?”
Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a thing which
rarely happened with her.
“You’re encroaching on Princess Myakaya’s special domain now. That’s the question
of an enfant terrible,” and Betsy obviously tried to restrain herself, but could not,
and went off into peals of that infectious laughter that people laugh who do not
laugh often. “You’d better ask them,” she brought out, between tears of laughter.
“No; you laugh,” said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself, “but I never could
understand it. I can’t understand the husband’s rôle in it.”
“The husband? Liza Merkalova’s husband carries her shawl, and is always ready
to be of use. But anything more than that in reality, no one cares to inquire. You
know in decent society one doesn’t talk or think even of certain details of the toilet.
That’s how it is with this.”
“Will you be at Madame Rolandak’s fête?” asked Anna, to change the conversation.
“I don’t think so,” answered Betsy, and, without looking at her friend, she began
filling the little transparent cups with fragrant tea. Putting a cup before Anna, she
took out a cigarette, and, fitting it into a silver holder, she lighted it.
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