"Not all," said Dolly. "You judge by your own husband.
It makes him miserable even now to remember Vronsky.
Eh? that's true, isn't it?"
"Yes," Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.
"But I really don't know," the mother put in in defense of her motherly care of her daughter, "what there was in your past that could worry him?
That Vronsky paid you attentions--that happens to every girl."
"Oh, yes, but we didn't mean that," Kitty said, flushing a little.
"No, let me speak," her mother went on, "why, you yourself would not let me have a talk to Vronsky.
Don't you remember?"
"Oh, mamma!" said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.
"There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays....
Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable.
I should myself have called upon him to explain himself.
But, my darling, it's not right for you to be agitated.
Please remember that, and calm yourself."
"I'm perfectly calm, maman." "How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then," said Dolly, "and how unhappy for her.
It turned out quite the opposite," she said, struck by her own ideas. "Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself unhappy.
Now it is just the opposite.
I often think of her."
"A nice person to think about!
Horrid, repulsive woman--no heart," said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but Levin.
"What do you want to talk of it for?" Kitty said with annoyance. "I never think about it, and I don't want to think of it....
And I don't want to think of it," she said, catching the sound of her husband's well-known step on the steps of the terrace.
"What's that you don't want to think about?" inquired Levin, coming onto the terrace.
But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.
"I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine parliament," he said, looking round on every one discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.
For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element.
He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.
"Well, how are you?" he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now.
"Oh, very well," said Kitty, smiling, "and how have things gone with you?"
"The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did.
Well, are we going for the children?
I've ordered the horses to be put in."
"What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?" her mother said reproachfully.
"Yes, at a walking pace, princess."
Levin never called the princess "maman" as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so.
But though he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.
"Come with us, maman," said Kitty.
"I don't like to see such imprudence."
"Well, I'll walk then, I'm so well." Kitty got up and went to her husband and took his hand.
"You may be well, but everything in moderation," said the princess.
"Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?" said Levin, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. "Is it all right in the new way?"
"I suppose it's all right.
For our notions it's boiled too long."
"It'll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won't mildew, even though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we've no cool cellar to store it," said Kitty, at once divining her husband's motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; "but your pickle's so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it," she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.
Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.
"You needn't try to console me, mistress.
I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy," she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that _with him_ touched Kitty.
"Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places." Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say:
"I should like to be angry with you too, but I can't."