Page 59 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘It’s not that you’re no good at it,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch; ‘it is that you don’t look at it as you should.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Levin answered dejectedly.
‘Oh! do you know brother Nikolay’s turned up again?’

This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of
Konstantin Levin, and half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a
man utterly ruined, who had dissipated the greater part of
his fortune, was living in the strangest and lowest
company, and had quarreled with his brothers.
‘What did you say?’ Levin cried with horror. ‘How do
you know?’
‘Prokofy saw him in the street.’
‘Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?’ Levin
got up from his chair, as though on the point of starting
off at once.
‘I am sorry I told you,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking
his head at his younger brother’s excitement. ‘I sent to
find out where he is living, and sent him his IOU to
Trubin, which I paid. This is the answer he sent me.’
And Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a
paper-weight and handed it to his brother.
Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: ‘I
humbly beg you to leave me in peace. That’s the only
favor I ask of my gracious brothers.—Nikolay Levin.’

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