Anna Karenina - Part 5

Lidia Ivanovna's dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all

her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the

reverse of that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her

desire had been to adorn herself with something, and the more

adorned the better. Now, on the contrary, she was perforce

decked out in a way so inconsistent with her age and her figure,

that her one anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between

these adornments and her own exterior should not be too

appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she

succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the

one island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst

of the sea of hostility and jeering that surrounded him.

Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally

to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.

"I congratulate you," she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders,

closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a

source of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well

aware that it was one of his chief sources of satisfaction,

though he never admitted it.

"How is our angel?" said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning

Seryozha.

"I can't say I was quite pleased with him," said Alexey

Alexandrovitch, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. "And

Sitnikov is not satisfied with him." (Sitnikov was the tutor to

whom Seryozha's secular education had been intrusted.) "As I

have mentioned to you, there's a sort of coldness in him towards

the most important questions which ought to touch the heart of

every man and every child...." Alexey Alexandrovitch began

expounding his views on the sole question that interested him

besides the service--the education of his son.

When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna's help had been

brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to

undertake the education of the son left on his hands. Having

never before taken any interest in educational questions, Alexey

Alexandrovitch devoted some time to the theoretical study of the

subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education,

and didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch drew up a plan of education,

and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg to superintend it, he

set to work, and the subject continually absorbed him.

"Yes, but the heart. I see in him his father's heart, and with

such a heart a child cannot go far wrong," said Lidia Ivanovna

with enthusiasm.