Page 471 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

everything in people in the most favorable light possible,
especially so in those she did not know. And now as she
made surmises as to who people were, what were their
relations to one another, and what they were like, Kitty

endowed them with the most marvelous and noble
characters, and found confirmation of her idea in her
observations.
Of these people the one that attracted her most was a
Russian girl who had come to the watering-place with an
invalid Russian lady, Madame Stahl, as everyone called
her. Madame Stahl belonged to the highest society, but
she was so ill that she could not walk, and only on
exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs
in an invalid carriage. But it was not so much from ill-
health as from pride—so Princess Shtcherbatskaya
interpreted it—that Madame Stahl had not made the
acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The
Russian girl looked after Madame Stahl, and besides that,
she was, as Kitty observed, on friendly terms with all the
invalids who were seriously ill, and there were many of
them at the springs, and looked after them in the most
natural way. This Russian girl was not, as Kitty gathered,
related to Madame Stahl, nor was she a paid attendant.
Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other people called

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