Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/818

 "Well, you understand, you turn to the left and then you'll get there," said the muzhik, evidently reluctant to part with the strangers and anxious to talk.

The coachman touched up his horses, but they had hardly started ere the muzhik cried:—

"Wait! he! hold on!" cried two voices together The coachman reined in again. "There they come. There they are," cried the muzhik. "See what a lot of them," and he pointed to four persons on horseback and two in a char a bancs who were coming along the road.

They were Vronsky and his jockey, Veslovsky and Anna, on horseback, and the princess Varvara with Sviazhsky in the char a bancs. They had been out to ride and to look at the operation of some newly imported reaping-machines.

When the carriage stopped the riders were all walking their horses. In front Anna rode with Veslovsky. Anna rode at an easy gait on a little stout English cob with a cropped mane and docked tail. Her pretty head, with her dark ringlets escaping from under a tall hat, her full shoulders, her slender waist in a tightly fitting amazonka, and her whole easy, graceful horsemanship surprised Dolly. At first it seemed to her unbecoming for Anna to be riding horseback. Darya Aleksandrovna connected the idea of horseback riding for ladies with the idea of light, youthful coquetry, which seemed to her did not accord well with Anna's position; but as she examined her more closely she immediately became reconciled to her going on horseback. Notwithstanding all her elegance, everything about her was so simple, easy, and appropriate in her pose and in her habit and in her motions, that nothing could have been more natural.

Next to Anna, on a gray, fiery cavalry horse, rode Vasenka Veslovsky, thrusting his fat legs forward, and evidently very well satisfied with himself. He still wore his Scotch cap with its floating ribbons, and Darya Aleksandrovna could hardly restrain a smile of amusement when she saw him.