Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/806

 "Why, what has she done?" asked Levin, rather indifferently, for he was annoyed to find that he had come at the wrong time when he wished some advice regarding his own affairs.

"She and Grisha went into the raspberry bush, and there .... but I can't tell you what she did. I'd a thousand times rather have Miss Elliot. This governess doesn't look after anything .... she's a machine. Figurez vous, que la petite ...."

And Darya Aleksandrovna related Masha's misdeeds.

"There's nothing very bad in that. That doesn't signify a bad disposition. It is only a piece of childish mischief," said Levin, soothingly.

"But what is the matter with you? You look troubled. What has happened down-stairs?" asked Dolly, and by the tone of her questions Levin perceived that it would be easy for him to say what he had in his mind to say.

"I haven't been down-stairs. I have been alone in the garden with Kitty. We have just had a quarrel .... the second since.... Stiva came."

Dolly looked at him with her intelligent, penetrating eyes.

"Now tell me, with your hand on your heart," he said, "tell me, was the conduct, not of Kitty, but of this young man, anything else than unpleasant, not unpleasant, but intolerable, insulting even, to a husband?"

"What shall I say to you?—Stand, stand in the corner!" said she to Masha, who, noticing the scarcely perceptible smile on her mother's face, started to go away. "Society would say that he is only behaving as all young men behave. Il fait la cour à une jeune et jolie femme, and her husband, as himself a gentleman of society, should be flattered by it."

"Yes, yes," said Levin, angrily; "but have you noticed it?"

"I noticed it, of course, and so did Stiva. Just after tea he said to me, 'Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour a Kitty.' "