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 They say that he was the only support of a large family. How terrible!"

"Could anything be done for her?" said Madame Karenina, in an agitated whisper.

Vronsky looked at her, and immediately left the carriage.

"I will be right back, maman," said he, turning round at the door.

When he came back, at the end of a few minutes, Stepan Arkadyevitch was talking with the countess about a new singer, and she was impatiently watching the door for her son.

"Now let us go," said Vronsky,

They all went out together, Vronsky walking ahead with his mother, Madame Karenina and her brother side by side. At the door the station-master overtook them, and said to Vronsky:—

"You have given my assistant two hundred rubles. Will you kindly indicate the disposition that we shall make of them?"

"For his widow," said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't see why you should have asked me."

"Did you give that?" asked Oblonsky; and, pressing his sister's arm, he said, "Very kind, very kind. Glorious fellow, is n't he? My best wishes, countess."

He and his sister delayed, looking for her maid. When they left the station, the Vronskys' carriage had already gone. People on all sides were talking about what had happened.

"What a horrible way of dying!" said a gentleman, passing near them. "They say he was cut in two."

"It seems to me, on the contrary," replied another, "that it was a very easy way; death was instantaneous."

"Why were n't there any precautions taken?" asked a third.

Madame Karenina sat down in the carriage; and Stepan Arkadyevitch noticed, with astonishment, that her lips trembled, and that she could hardly keep back the tears.