Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 61/119

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.

"Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the

_diva?_" he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.