"What have you done?
I'll tell you what. First of all, you're trying to catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and with good reason.
If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don't pick out the possible suitors.
Invite all the young bucks. Engage a piano player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays, hunting up good matches.
It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you've gone on till you've turned the poor wench's head.
Levin's a thousand times the better man.
As for this little Petersburg swell, they're turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish.
But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after anyone."
"But what have I done?"
"Why, you've..." The prince was crying wrathfully.
"I know if one were to listen to you," interrupted the princess, "we should never marry our daughter.
If it's to be so, we'd better go into the country."
"Well, and we had better."
"But do wait a minute.
Do I try and catch them?
I don't try to catch them in the least.
A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love with her, and she, I fancy..."
"Oh, yes, you fancy!
And how if she really is in love, and he's no more thinking of marriage than I am!...
Oh, that I should live to see it!
Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!" And the prince, imagining that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word. "And this is how we're preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she's really got the notion into her head..."
"But what makes you suppose so?"
"I don't suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though women-folk haven't.
I see a man who has serious intentions, that's Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who's only amusing himself."
"Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!..."
"Well, you'll remember my words, but too late, just as with Dolly."
"Well, well, we won't talk of it," the princess stopped him, recollecting her unlucky Dolly.
"By all means, and good night!"
And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.
The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had settled Kitty's future, and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky's intentions, but her husband's words had disturbed her.
And returning to her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like Kitty, repeated several times in her heart,
"Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity."
Chapter 16.
Vronsky had never had a real home life.
His mother had been in her youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life, and still more afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole fashionable world.
His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been educated in the Corps of Pages.
Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men.
Although he did go more or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always hitherto been outside it.
In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him.
It never even entered his head that there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty.
At balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at their house.
He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society--all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case.
Although he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her.
He did not know that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was.
It seemed to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he could have put himself at the point ov view of the family and have heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it.
He could not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong.
Still less could he have believed that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility.
He not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all, ridiculous.