Page 308 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his
habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone.
‘Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,’ he said, looking
round at all the party; ‘the graces and the muses.’

But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his—
‘sneering,’ as she called it, using the English word, and like
a skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious
conversation on the subject of universal conscription.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the
subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial
decree against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.
‘This is getting indecorous,’ whispered one lady, with
an expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and
her husband.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Anna’s friend.
But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room,
even the Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked
several times in the direction of the two who had
withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a
disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only
person who did not once look in that direction, and was
not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered
upon.

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