"Oh, I've known her a long while, you know. She's very
good-hearted, I suppose, _mais excessivement terre-à-terre._
Still, I'm very glad to see her."
He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.
Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in
spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared
for her homeward journey. Levin's coachman, in his by no means
new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his
coach with the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy
determination into the covered gravel approach.
Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and
the gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she
and her hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on
together, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna
was sad. She knew that now, from Dolly's departure, no one again
would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused
by their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings,
but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and
that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life
she was leading.
As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a
delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two
men how they had liked being at Vronsky's, when suddenly the
coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked: "Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all
they gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn't a grain
left by cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And
oats now down to forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all
comers may have as much as they can eat."
"The master's a screw," put in the counting house clerk.
"Well, did you like their horses?" asked Dolly.
"The horses!--there's no two opinions about them. And the food
was good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya
Alexandrovna. I don't know what you thought," he said, turning
his handsome, good-natured face to her.
"I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?"
"Eh, we must!"
On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and
particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great
liveliness telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had
received her, of the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys
lived, and of their recreations, and she would not allow a word
to be said against them.