Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 17
Chapter 17
NEXT day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station of the
Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he came across on
the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister by the same
train.
“Ah! your excellency!” cried Oblonsky, “whom are you meeting?”
“My mother,” Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met Oblonsky.
He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the steps. “She is to be here
from Petersburg today.”
“I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night. Where did you go after the
Shtcherbatskys’?”
“Home,” answered Vronsky. “I must own I felt so well content yesterday after the
Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go anywhere.”
“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.
Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it, but he
promptly changed the subject.
“And whom are you meeting?” he asked.
“I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,” said Oblonsky.
“You don’t say so!”
“Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.”
“Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,” said Vronsky.
“You know her, no doubt?”
“I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure,” Vronsky answered heedlessly,
with a vague recollection of something stiff and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.
“But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely must know.
All the world knows him.”
“I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he’s clever, learned, religious
somewhat.... But you know that’s not...not in my line,” said Vronsky in English.
“Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a splendid man,”
observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “a splendid man.”
“Oh, well, so much the better for him,” said Vronsky smiling. “Oh, you’ve come,”
he said, addressing a tall old footman of his mother’s, standing at the door; “come
here.”
Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky had felt of late
specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagination he was associated with
Kitty.
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