Page 470 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

The German princess said, ‘I hope the roses will soon
come back to this pretty little face,’ and for the
Shtcherbatskys certain definite lines of existence were at
once laid down from which there was no departing. The

Shtcherbatskys made the acquaintance too of the family of
an English Lady Somebody, and of a German countess and
her son, wounded in the last war, and of a learned Swede,
and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet inevitably the
Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society of a
Moscow lady, Marya Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her
daughter, whom Kitty disliked, because she had fallen ill,
like herself, over a love affair, and a Moscow colonel,
whom Kitty had known from childhood, and always seen
in uniform and epaulets, and who now, with his little eyes
and his open neck and flowered cravat, was uncommonly
ridiculous and tedious, because there was no getting rid of
him. When all this was so firmly established, Kitty began
to be very much bored, especially as the prince went away
to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She
took no interest in the people she knew, feeling that
nothing fresh would come of them. Her chief mental
interest in the watering-place consisted in watching and
making theories about the people she did not know. It
was characteristic of Kitty that she always imagined

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