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“You expected it, I suppose?”
“Almost. She always cared for him.”
“Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I
warned Kitty.”
“It will make no difference,” said Madame Lvova; “we’re all obedi-
ent wives; it’s in our family.”
“Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you,
Dolly?”
Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer.
She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not
have spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin;
going back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant
figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and remembered
only her own innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her
women-friends and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one
day of their triumph, when they had stood like Kitty under the wed-
ding crown, with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing
the past, and stepping forward into the mysterious future. Among the
brides that came back to her memory, she thought too of her darling
Anna, of whose proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she
had stood just as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now?
“It’s terribly strange,” she said to herself. It was not merely the sisters,
the women-friends and female relations of the bride who were follow-
ing every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite strangers,
mere spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear
of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom,
and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the callous
men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.
“Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?”
“Against her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn’t he?”
“Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon
booms out, ‘And fearing her husband.’”
“Are the choristers from Tchudovo?”
“No, from the Synod.”
“I asked the footman. He says he’s going to take her home to his
country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That’s why she’s being
married to him.”
“No, they’re a well-matched pair.”
“I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away
crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress—an
ambassador’s wife they say she is—how her skirt bounces out from
side to sides”
“What a pretty dear the bride is—like a lamb decked with flowers!
Well, say what you will, we women feel for our sister.”
Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had
succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.