Page 1196 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 1

Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her
children at Pokrovskoe, at her sister Kitty Levin’s. The
house on her own estate was quite in ruins, and Levin and
his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with
them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the
arrangement. He said he was very sorry his official duties
prevented him from spending the summer in the country
with his family, which would have been the greatest
happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came
down to the country from time to time for a day or two.
Besides the Oblonskys, with all their children and their
governess, the old princess too came to stay that summer
with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to watch
over her inexperienced daughter in her INTERESTING
CONDITION. Moreover, Varenka, Kitty’s friend abroad,
kept her promise to come to Kitty when she was married,

and stayed with her friend. All of these were friends or
relations of Levin’s wife. And though he liked them all, he
rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was
smothered by this influx of the ‘Shtcherbatsky element,’ as
he called it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed
with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of

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