When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the little

drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his

father, giving him a lesson in French reading. As the boy read,

he kept twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly

off his jacket. His mother had several times taken his hand from

it, but the fat little hand went back to the button again. His

mother pulled the button off and put it in her pocket.

"Keep your hands still, Grisha," she said, and she took up her

work, a coverlet she had long been making. She always set to

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work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it

nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches.

Though she had sent word the day before to her husband that it

was nothing to her whether his sister came or not, she had made

everything ready for her arrival, and was expecting her

sister-in-law with emotion.

Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it.

Still she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the

wife of one of the most important personages in Petersburg, and

was a Petersburg _grande dame_. And, thanks to this circumstance,

she did not carry out her threat to her husband--that is to say,

she remembered that her sister-in-law was coming. "And, after

all, Anna is in no wise to blame," thought Dolly. "I know

nothing of her except the very best, and I have seen nothing but

kindness and affection from her towards myself." It was true

that as far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at

the Karenins', she did not like their household itself; there was

something artificial in the whole framework of their family life.

"But why should I not receive her? If only she doesn't take it

into her head to console me!" thought Dolly. "All consolation

and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought

over a thousand times, and it's all no use."

All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did

not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart

she could not talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way

or another she would tell Anna everything, and she was

alternately glad at the thought of speaking freely, and angry at

the necessity of speaking of her humiliation with her, his

sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases of good advice and

comfort. She had been on the lookout for her, glancing at her

watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip just that

minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the

bell.




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