350 351
again.
This was so simply said, and so sweet was the truthful and candid
expression of her face, that the princess saw why Kitty had taken such
a fancy to Varenka.
“Well, and what’s this Levin going to do?” asked the princess.
“He’s going away,” answered Varenka.
At that instant Kitty came up from the spring beaming with de-
light that her mother had become acquainted with her unknown friend.
“Well, see, Kitty, your intense desire to make friends with Made-
moiselle.. .”
“Varenka,” Varenka put in smiling, “that’s what everyone calls me.”
Kitty blushed with pleasure, and slowly, without speaking, pressed
her new friend’s hand, which did not respond to her pressure, but lay
motionless in her hand. The hand did not respond to her pressure, but
the face of Mademoiselle Varenka glowed with a soft, glad, though
rather mournful smile, that showed large but handsome teeth.
“I have long wished for this too,” she said.
“But you are so busy.”
“Oh, no, I’m not at all busy,” answered Varenka, but at that mo-
ment she had to leave her new friends because two little Russian girls,
children of an invalid, ran up to her.
“Varenka, mamma’s calling!” they cried.
And Varenka went after them.
Chapter 32.
The particulars which the princess had learned in regard to
Varenka’s past and her relations with Madame Stahl were as follows:
Madame Stahl, of whom some people said that she had worried
her husband out of his life, while others said it was he who had made
her wretched by his immoral behavior, had always been a woman of
weak health and enthusiastic temperament. When, after her separa-
tion from her husband, she gave birth to her only child, the child had
died almost immediately, and the family of Madame Stahl, knowing
her sensibility, and fearing the news would kill her, had substituted
another child, a baby born the same night and in the same house in
Petersburg, the daughter of the chief cook of the Imperial Household.
This was Varenka. Madame Stahl learned later on that Varenka was
not her own child, but she went on bringing her up, especially as very
soon afterwards Varenka had not a relation of her own living. Madame
Stahl had now been living more than ten years continuously abroad, in
the south, never leaving her couch. And some people said that Ma-
dame Stahl had made her social position as a philanthropic, highly
religious woman; other people said she really was at heart the highly
ethical being, living for nothing but the good of her fellow creatures,
which she represented herself to be. No one knew what her faith
was—Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. But one fact was indubi-