Page 296 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How
you startled me!’ she responded. ‘Please don’t talk to me
about the opera; you know nothing about music. I’d
better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your

majolica and engravings. Come now, what treasure have
yo been buying lately at the old curiosity shops?’
‘Would you like me to show you? But you don’t
understand such things.’
‘Oh, do show me! I’ve been learning about them at
those—what’s their names?...the bankers...they’ve some
splendid engravings. They showed them to us.’
‘Why, have you been at the Schuetzburgs?’ asked the
hostess from the samovar.
‘Yes, ma chere. They asked my husband and me to
dinner, and told us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred
pounds,’ Princess Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and
conscious everyone was listening; ‘and very nasty sauce it
was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made
them sauce for eighteen pence, and everybody was very
much pleased with it. I can’t run to hundred-pound
sauces.’
‘She’s unique!’ said the lady of the house.
‘Marvelous!’ said someone.

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