Page 1124 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!’ said the little old man,
with a malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when
Karenin was on a level with them, and was nodding with
a frigid gesture, ‘I haven’t congratulated you yet,’ said the

old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon.
‘Thank you,’ answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. ‘What
an EXQUISITE day to-day,’ he added, laying emphasis in
his peculiar way on the word EXQUISITE.
That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did
not expect anything but hostility from them; he was used
to that by now.
Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia
Ivanovna jutting out above her corset, and her fine
pensive eyes bidding him to her, Alexey Alexandrovitch
smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went
towards her.
Lidia Ivanovna’s dress had cost her great pains, as
indeed all her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress
was now quite the reverse of that she had pursued thirty
years before. Then her desire had been to adorn herself
with something, and the more adorned the better. Now,
on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so
inconsistent with her age and her figure, that her one
anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between these

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