Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 24
Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the gentlemen
of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her hosts were distinctly aware
that they did not get on together, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only
Anna was sad. She knew that now, from Dolly’s departure, no one again would stir
up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt
her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul,
and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.
As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a delightful
sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at
Vronsky’s, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked:
“Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave us. Everything
cleared up till there wasn’t a grain left by cockcrow. What are three pots? A
mere mouthful! And oats now down to forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all
comers may have as much as they can eat.”
“The master’s a screw,” put in the counting house clerk.
“Well, did you like their horses?” asked Dolly.
“The horses!–there’s no two opinions about them. And the food was good. But
it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don’t know what you
thought,” he said, turning his handsome, good-natured face to her.
“I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?”
“Eh, we must!”
On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and particularly
charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness telling them how she
had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of the luxury and good taste in
which the Vronskys lived, and of their recreations, and she would not allow a word
to be said against them.
“One has to know Anna and Vronsky–I have got to know him better now–to see
how nice they are, and how touching,” she said, speaking now with perfect sincerity,
and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experienced
there.
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