As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin

heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the

house.

"Yes, that's someone from the railway station," he thought,

"just the time to be here from the Moscow train...Who could it

be? What if it's brother Nikolay? He did say: 'Maybe I'll go

to the waters, or maybe I'll come down to you.'" He felt

dismayed and vexed for the first minute, that his brother

Nikolay's presence should come to disturb his happy mood of

spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he

opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened

feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart

that it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out

from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from

the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not

his brother. "Oh, if it were only some nice person one could

talk to a little!" he thought.

"Ah," cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. "Here's

a delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!" he shouted,

recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"I shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when

she's going to be married," he thought. And on that delicious

spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at

all.

"Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his

nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health

and good spirits. "I've come to see you in the first place," he

said, embracing and kissing him, "to have some stand-shooting

second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third."

"Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get

along in a sledge?"

"In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin

Dmitrievitch," answered the driver, who knew him.

"Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a

genuine smile of childlike delight.

Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where

Stepan Arkadyevitch's things were carried also--a bag, a gun in

a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and

change his clothes, Levin went off to the counting house to speak

about the ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very

anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall with

inquiries about dinner.




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