Page 130 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he
did not deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.
‘And whom are you meeting?’ he asked.
‘I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,’ said Oblonsky.

‘You don’t say so!’
‘Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.’
‘Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,’ said Vronsky.
‘You know her, no doubt?’
‘I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure,’
Vronsky answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of
something stiff and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.
‘But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-
law, you surely must know. All the world knows him.’
‘I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that
he’s clever, learned, religious somewhat.... But you know
that’s not...not in my line,’ said Vronsky in English.
‘Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative,
but a splendid man,’ observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, ‘a
splendid man.’
‘Oh, well, so much the better for him,’ said Vronsky
smiling. ‘Oh, you’ve come,’ he said, addressing a tall old
footman of his mother’s, standing at the door; ‘come
here.’

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