Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/44

 CHAPTER VI

Oblonsky asked Levin for what special reason he had come, Levin grew red in the face, and he was angry with himself because he grew red; but how could he have replied, "I have come to ask the hand of your sister-in-law"? Yet he had come for that single purpose.

The Levin and the Shcherbatsky families, belonging to the old nobility of Moscow, had always been on intimate and friendly terms. During Levin's student life the bond had grown stronger. He and the young Prince Shcherbatsky, the brother of Dolly and Kitty, had taken their preparatory studies, and gone through the university together. At that time Levin was a frequent visitor at the Shcherbatskys, and was in love with the house. Strange as it may seem, he was in love with the house itself, with the family, especially with the feminine portion. Konstantin Levin could not remember his mother, and his only sister was much older than he was, so that for the first time he found in the house of the Shcherbatskys that charming cultivated life so peculiar to the old nobility, and of which the death of his parents had deprived him. All the members of this family, but especially the ladies, seemed to him to be surrounded with a mysterious and poetic halo.

Not only did he fail to discover any faults in them, but underneath this poetic and mysterious halo surrounding them, he saw the loftiest sentiments and the most ideal perfections. Why these three young ladies were obliged to speak French and English every day; why they had to take turns in playing for hours at a time on the piano, the sounds of which floated up to their brother's room, where the young students were at work; why professors of French literature, of music, of drawing, of dancing, came to give them lessons; why the three young ladies, at a certain hour, accompanied by Mlle. Linon, drove out in their carriage to the Tverskoï Boulevard, wearing satin shubkas, Dolly's very long, Natalie's