Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/842

 "It is all I could do," she said laughingly, to Anna, who came to her, dressed in a third but very simple costume.

"Well! we are very formal here," said Anna, in apology for her elegant attire. "Alekseï is so glad that you came. I believe he has fallen in love with you," she added. "I hope you are not tired."

Before dinner there was no time for any talk. When they entered the drawing-room, they found the Princess Varvara and the gentlemen all in evening dress. The architect was the only one that wore a frock-coat. Vronsky presented the doctor and the superintendent to his guest. She had already met the architect at the hospital.

A portly butler, wearing a stiffly starched white cravat, and with his smooth round face shining, came and announced that dinner was served, and the ladies stood up. Vronsky asked Sviazhsky to escort Anna Arkadyevna into the dining-room, and he himself offered his arm to Darya Aleksandrovna. Veslovsky was quicker than Tushkievitch in handing in the Princess Varvara, so that Tushkievitch went with the doctor and the superintendent.

The dinner, the service, the plate, the wine, and the dishes served, not only corresponded to the general tone of new luxury appertaining to the household, but seemed even more luxurious and elegant. Darya Aleksandrovna took note of this splendor, which was quite new to her, and, as the mistress of an establishment of her own, she could not help making a mental inventory of the details, and wondering how and by whom it was all done; and yet she had no dream of introducing anything like it into her own home, which was conducted on a scale of far greater simplicity.

Vasenka Veslovsky, her own husband, and even Sviazhsky and many more men whom she knew, had never carried out anything like this, and every one of them believed in the dictum that the master of a well-regulated household always desires to make his guests imagine that the elegance and comfort surrounding