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indifferently, giving his hand.
“You set off with the mother and you return with the son,” he said,
articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was
bestowing.
“You’re back from leave, I suppose?” he said, and without waiting
for a reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: “Well, were a great
many tears shed at Moscow at parting?”
By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand
that he wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he
touched his hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.
“I hope I may have the honor of calling on you,” he said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.
“Delighted,” he said coldly. “On Mondays we’re at home. Most
fortunate,” he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether, “that I
should just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my
devotion,” he went on in the same jesting tone.
“You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,”
she responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the
sound of Vronsky’s steps behind them. “But what has it to do with
me?” she said to herself, and she began asking her husband how
Seryozha had got on without her.
“Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And...I must
disappoint you...but he has not missed you as your husband has. But
once more merci, my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear Samovar will
be delighted.” (He used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well
known in society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over
with excitement.) “She has been continually asking after you. And, do
you know, if I may venture to advise you, you should go and see her
today. You know how she takes everything to heart. Just now, with all
her own cares, she’s anxious about the Oblonskys being brought to-
gether.”
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband’s, and
the center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with
which Anna was, through her husband, in the closest relations.
“But you know I wrote to her?”
“Still she’ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you’re not too
tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I go
to my committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again,” Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. “You wouldn’t
believe how I’ve missed...” And with a long pressure of her hand and
a meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.