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cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!” said the princess, and by
the change in her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speak-
ing of Vronsky. “I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such base,
dishonorable people.”
“Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!” said the prince gloomily, getting up
from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the
doorway. “There are laws, madam, and since you’ve challenged me to
it, I’ll tell you who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody
else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and
there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have
been, old as I am, I’d have called him out to the barrier, the young
dandy. Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks.”
The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the
princess heard his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as
she always did on serious occasions.
“Alexander, Alexander,” she whispered, moving to him and begin-
ning to weep.
As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went
up to her.
“There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched too, I know.
It can’t be helped. There’s no great harm done. God is
merciful...thanks...” he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he
responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand.
And the prince went out of the room.
Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly,
with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a
woman’s work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took of her
hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for
action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain
her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince’s
outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender
towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her
father left them she made ready for what was the chief thing need-
ful—to go to Kitty and console her.
“I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma:
did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was
here the last time? He told Stiva so.”
“Well, what then? I don’t understand...”
“So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?... She didn’t tell you so?”
“No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she’s too
proud. But I know it’s all on account of the other.”
“Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn’t have
refused him if it hadn’t been for the other, I know. And then, he has
deceived her so horribly.”
It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned
against her daughter, and she broke out angrily.
“Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own
way, and mothers haven’t a word to say in anything, and then...”
“Mamma, I’ll go up to her.”
“Well, do. Did I tell you not to?” said her mother.