Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 6
“I was very busy. Delighted to see you!” he said in a tone clearly indicating that
he was annoyed by it. “How are you?”
“Tell me, how is my darling Anna?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled something and would have gone on. But Stepan
Arkadyevitch stopped him.
“I tell you what we’ll do tomorrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner. We’ll ask Koznishev
and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our Moscow celebrities.”
“Yes, please, do come,” said Dolly; “we will expect you at five, or six o’clock, if
you like. How is my darling Anna? How long...”
“She is quite well,” Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled, frowning. “Delighted!” and
he moved away towards his carriage.
“You will come?” Dolly called after him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch said something which Dolly could not catch in the noise
of the moving carriages.
“I shall come round tomorrow!” Stepan Arkadyevitch shouted to him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch got into his carriage, and buried himself in it so as neither
to see nor be seen.
“Queer fish!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch to his wife, and glancing at his watch,
he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating a caress to his wife and
children, and walked jauntily along the pavement.
“Stiva! Stiva!” Dolly called, reddening.
He turned round.
“I must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tanya. Give me the money.”
“Never mind; you tell them I’ll pay the bill!” and he vanished, nodding genially
to an acquaintance who drove by.
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