Anna Karenina (Louise Maude's Translation). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 15

      AFTER the guests had gone Kitty told her mother of her conversation with Levin, and in spite of all her pity for him she was pleased by the thought that she had had a proposal. She did not doubt that she had acted rightly, yet for a long time she lay in bed unable to sleep. One image pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face with his kind eyes looking mournfully from under his knit brows as he stood listening to her father and glancing at her and at Vronsky, and she felt so sorry for him that tears rose to her eyes. But she immediately remembered for whom she had exchanged him. She vividly pictured to herself that strong manly face, that well-bred calm and the kindness toward everybody he always showed: she remembered the love the man she loved bore her, and again became joyful and with a happy smile put her head on her pillow. ‘It is a pity, a pity, but I am not to blame,’ she said to herself, but an inner voice said something different. Whether she repented of having drawn Levin on or of having rejected him she did not know, but her happiness was troubled by doubts.

      ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy,’ she repeated to herself till she fell asleep.

      Meanwhile below in the Prince’s little study her parents were having one of their frequent scenes about their favourite daughter.

      ‘What? I’ll tell you what!’ shouted the Prince, flourishing his arms and immediately again wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown around him. ‘You have no pride, no dignity, you disgrace and ruin your daughter by this vile idiotic matchmaking.’

      ‘For goodness’ sake, Prince, what in heaven’s own name have I done?’ said the Princess almost in tears.

      After her talk with her daughter she had come in, happy and contented, to say good-night to the Prince as usual, and though she did not intend to speak to him about Levin’s proposal and Kitty’s refusal she hinted to him that she thought the matter with Vronsky was quite settled and would probably be definitely decided as soon as his mother arrived. And when she said that, the Prince suddenly flared up and began to shout rudely: ‘What have you done? Why this: first of all you entice a suitor. All Moscow will talk about it and with reason. If you give a party invite everybody and not only selected suitors. Invite all the young puppies,’ so the Prince called the Moscow young men, ‘have a pianist and let them dance; but don’t have the sort of thing we had tonight — these suitors and this pairing off. It makes me sick to see it, simply sick, and you have had your way and have turned the child’s head. Levin is a thousand times the better man. This one is a little Petersburg fop. They are machine-made by the dozen, all to one pattern, and all mere rubbish. But even if he were a Prince of the blood my daughter does not need him.’

      ‘But what have I done?’

      ‘Just this …’ exclaimed the Prince angrily.

      ‘I know this much,’ the Princess interrupted him, ‘that if I were to listen to what you say we should never see our daughter married, and we had better go and live in the country.’

      ‘So we had!’

      ‘Wait a bit! Do I draw them on? No, certainly not, but a young man and an excellent young man falls in love with Kitty, and she too seems …’

      ‘Seems indeed! And suppose she really falls in love with him while he intends to marry about as much as I do… . Oh, I wish my eyes had never seen it … “Ah spiritualism! Ah how nice! Ah the ball!” ’ And the Prince imagining himself to be impersonating his wife curtsied at each word. ‘And then if we really ruin Kitty’s happiness, if she really gets it into her head …’

      ‘But why do you suppose such a thing?’

      ‘I don’t suppose, I know! We have eyes for those things, and women haven’t. I can recognize a man who has serious intentions — such as Levin — and I can see through a weathercock like that popinjay who only wishes to amuse himself.’

      ‘Oh well, when you once get a thing into your head …’

      ‘And you’ll find it out, but too late, just as with poor Dolly.’

      ‘All right. All right, don’t let’s talk,’ said the Princess, interrupting him and remembering the unfortunate Dolly.

      ‘Very well then, good-night.’

      And having made the sign of the cross over one another and kissed, feeling that each of them retained their individual opinions, the couple separated for the night.

      The Princess had been at first firmly convinced that this evening had decided Kitty’s fate and that there could be no doubt as to Vronsky’s intentions; but her husband’s words disturbed her, and when she reached her room, in terror of the uncertainty of the future, she mentally repeated, just as Kitty had done: ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’