Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 22
Chapter 22
WHEN Anna found Dolly at home before her, she looked intently in her eyes,
as though questioning her about the talk she had had with Vronsky, but she
made no inquiry in words.
“I believe it’s dinner time,” she said. “We’ve not seen each other at all yet. I am
reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I expect you do too; we all
got splashed at the buildings.”
Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was impossible,
for she had already put on her best dress. But in order to signify in some way her
preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to brush her dress, changed her cuffs and
tie, and put some lace on her head.
“This is all I can do,” she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to her in a third
dress, again of extreme simplicity.
“Yes, we are too formal here,” she said, as it were apologizing for her magnificence.
“Alexey is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at anything. He has completely lost
his heart to you,” she added. “You’re not tired?”
There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going into the drawing
room they found Princess Varvara already there, and the gentlemen of the party
in black frock-coats. The architect wore a swallow-tail coat. Vronsky presented the
doctor and the steward to his guest. The architect he had already introduced to her
at the hospital.
A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and a starched
white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the ladies got up. Vronsky
asked Sviazhsky to take in Anna Arkadyevna, and himself offered his arm to Dolly.
Veslovsky was before Tushkevitch in offering his arm to Princess Varvara, so that
Tushkevitch with the steward and the doctor walked in alone.
The dinner, the dining room, the service, the waiting at table, the wine, and the
food, were not simply in keeping with the general tone of modern luxury throughout
all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous and modern. Darya Alexandrovna
watched this luxury which was novel to her, and as a good housekeeper
used to managing a household–although she never dreamed of adapting anything
she saw to her own household, as it was all in a style of luxury far above her own
manner of living–she could not help scrutinizing every detail, and wondering how
and by whom it was all done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her husband, and even Sviazhsky,
and many other people she knew, would never have considered this question,
and would have readily believed what every well-bred host tries to make his guests
feel, that is, that all that is well-ordered in his house has cost him, the host, no trouble
whatever, but comes of itself. Darya Alexandrovna was well aware that even porridge
for the children’s breakfast does not come of itself, and that therefore, where so
complicated and magnificent a style of luxury was maintained, someone must give
earnest attention to its organization. And from the glance with which Alexey Kirillovitch
scanned the table, from the way he nodded to the butler, and offered Darya
Alexandrovna her choice between cold soup and hot soup, she saw that it was all
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