Page 442 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any
man who should question him on that subject. For this
reason there positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone

inquired after his wife’s health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did
not want to think at all about his wife’s behavior, and he
actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was
in Peterhof, and the Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a
rule to spend the summer there, close to Anna, and
constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna
declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna
Arkadyevna’s, and in conversation with Alexey
Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of Anna’s close
intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be
above suspicion, and from that time began to avoid
Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not want to see, and did
not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances
on his wife, he did not want to understand, and did not
understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on
staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far
from the camp of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow
himself to think about it, and he did not think about it;

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