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“Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the
third time you’ve asked me the same thing.”
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
“Nervous irritability,” he said to the princess, when Kitty had left
the room. “However, I had finished...”
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as
an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young prin-
cess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which
were certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the
doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty
problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad,
but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass
after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when
she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheer-
ful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending now.
“Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let’s
go!” she said, And trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she
began talking of the preparations for the journey.
Chapter 2.
Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was
to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her
confinement (she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the
winter), though she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she
had left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear Kitty’s fate,
which was to be decided that day.
“Well, well?” she said, coming into the drawing room, without tak-
ing off her hat. “You’re all in good spirits. Good news, then?”
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that
though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it
was utterly impossible to report what he had said. The only point of
interest was that it was settled they should go abroad.
Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was
going away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with
Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliat-
ing. The union Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid
character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the same
point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was
hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and
Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she
tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through