"Oh, I've known her a long while, you know. She's very

good-hearted, I suppose, _mais excessivement terre-à-terre._

Still, I'm very glad to see her."

He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.

Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in

spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared

for her homeward journey. Levin's coachman, in his by no means

new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his

coach with the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy

determination into the covered gravel approach.

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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.




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