第127章

`I slept badly,' answered Anna, looking intently at the footman who came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky's note.

`How glad I am you've come!' said Betsy. `I'm tired, and was just longing to have some tea before they come. You might go,' she turned to Tushkevich, `with Masha, and try the croquet ground over there, where they've been clipping it. We shall have time to talk a little over tea, we'll have a cozy chat, eh?' she said in English to Anna, with a smile, pressing the hand which held a parasol.

`Yes, especially as I can't stay very long with you. I'm forced to go on to old Madame Vrede. I've been promising to go for a century,'

said Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society, but a positive source of satisfaction.

Why she said this, which she had not thought of a second before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the reflection that as Vronsky would not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Hoffraulein Vrede, whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people, she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterward turned out, had she cudgeled her brains for the most cunning subterfuge to meet Vronsky, she could have thought of nothing better.

`No. I'm not going to let you go for anything,' answered Betsy, looking intently into Anna's face. `Really, if I were not fond of you, I should feel offended. One would think you were afraid my society would compromise you. - Tea in the small dining room, please,' she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing the footman.

Taking the note from him, she read it.

`Alexei is playing us false,' she said in French; `he writes that he can't come,' she added, in a tone as simple and natural as though it could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean anything more to Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Vronsky before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew nothing.

`Ah!' said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the matter; and she went on, smiling: `How can you or your friends compromise anyone?'

This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not the necessity of concealment, not the purpose for which the concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her.

`I can't be more catholic than the Pope,' she said. `Stremov and Liza Merkalova - why, they're the cream of the cream of society. Besides, they're received everywhere, and I' - she laid special stress on the I- `have never been strict and intolerant. It's simply that I haven't the time.'

`No; you don't care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexei Alexandrovich tilt at each other in the Committee - that's no affair of ours. But, in society, he's the most amiable man I know, and an ardent croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza's lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position. He's very nice. Don't you know Sappho Stoltz? Oh, that's a new type - quite new!'

Betsy went on with all this chatter, yet, at the same time, from her good-humored, shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.

`I must write to Alexei, though,' and Betsy sat down to the table, scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope. `I'm telling him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to dinner with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I've said - will that persuade him? Excuse me, Imust leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off? she said from the door; `I have to give some directions.'

Without a moment's hesitation, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy's letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: `It's essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o'clock.'

She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the note for transmittal.

At tea, which was brought them on a little tea table in the cool little drawing room, a cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaia before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women.

They criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova.

`She's very sweet, and I always liked her,' said Anna.

`You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you're a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as it is.'

`But do tell me, please - I never could make it out,' said Anna, after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of greater importance to her than it should have been, `do tell me, please: what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky - Mishka, as he's called? I've met them so little. What does it mean?'

Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.

`It's a new mode,' she said. `They've all adopted that mode. They've flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and ways of flinging them.'

`Yes, but precisely what are her relations with Kaluzhsky?'

Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a thing which rarely happened with her.

`You're encroaching on Princess Miaghkaia's special domain now.

That's the question of an enfant terrible ,' and Betsy obviously tried to restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that infectious laughter peculiar to people who do not laugh often. `You'd better ask them,' she brought out, between tears of laughter.