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 half-hour to come to meet you, and show you my affection."

"You emphasize your affection too much for me to appreciate it," she replied, in the same spirit of raillery, involuntarily listening to Vronsky's steps behind them. "But what is that to me?" she asked herself in thought. Then she began to ask her husband how Serozha had got along during her absence.

"Oh! excellently. Mariette says that he has been very good, and .... I am sorry to mortify you .... he did not seem to miss you—not so much as your husband did. But again, merci, my dear, that you came a day earlier. Our dear Samovar will be delighted."

He called the celebrated Countess Lidya Ivanovna by the nickname of the Samovar, because, like a tea-urn, she was always and everywhere bubbling and boiling. "She has kept asking after you; and do you know, if I make bold to advise you, you would do well to go to see her to-day. You see, her heart is always sore about something. At present, besides her usual cares, she is greatly concerned about the reconciliation of the Oblonskys."

The Countess Lidya Ivanovna was a friend of Anna's husband, and the center of a certain clique in Petersburg society, to which Anna on her husband's account, rather than for any other reason, belonged.

"Yes! But did n't I write her?"

"She must have all the details. Go to her, my love, if you are not too tired. Well! Kondratu will call your carriage, and I am going to a committee-meeting. I shall not have to dine alone to-day," continued Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, not in jest this time. "You cannot imagine how used I am to .... "

And with a peculiar smile, giving her a long pressure of the hand, he conducted her to the carriage.