?" she added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.

"It's very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my
words so well," responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering
his composure, and at once from habit dropped into his tone of
joking hostility to the Countess Nordston. "They must certainly
make a great impression on you."

"Oh, I should think so! I always note them all down. Well,
Kitty, have you been skating again?..."

And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to
withdraw now, it would still have been easier for him to
perpetrate this awkwardness than to remain all the evening and
see Kitty, who glanced at him now and then and avoided his eyes.
He was on the point of getting up, when the princess, noticing
that he was silent, addressed him.

"Shall you be long in Moscow? You're busy with the district
council, though, aren't you, and can't be away for long?"

"No, princess, I'm no longer a member of the council," he said.
"I have come up for a few days."

"There's something the matter with him," thought Countess
Nordston, glancing at his stern, serious face. "He isn't in his
old argumentative mood. But I'll draw him out. I do love making
a fool of him before Kitty, and I'll do it."

"Konstantin Dmitrievitch," she said to him, "do explain to me,
please, what's the meaning of it. You know all about such
things. At home in our village of Kaluga all the peasants and
all the women have drunk up all they possessed, and now they
can't pay us any rent. What's the meaning of that? You always
praise the peasants so."

At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got
up.

"Excuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about it, and
can't tell you anything," he said, and looked round at the
officer who came in behind the lady.

"That must be Vronsky," thought Levin, and, to be sure of it,
glanced at Kitty. She had already had time to look at Vronsky,
and looked round at Levin. And simply from the look in her eyes,
that grew unconsciously brighter, Levin knew that she loved that
man, knew it as surely as if she had told him so in words. But
what sort of a man was he? Now, whether for good or for ill,
Levin could not choose but remain; he must find out what the man
was like whom she loved.

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in
what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good
in him, and to see only what is bad. T