Just as she came in, Vronsky’s footman, resembling a kammerjunker with his brushed-up side-whiskers, also came in. He stopped by the door and, taking off his cap, allowed her to pass. Anna recognized him and only then remembered Vronsky’s saying the day before that he would not come. Probably he had sent a note to that effect.
As she was taking off her coat in the front hall, she heard the footman, even pronouncing his rs like a kammerjunker, say: ‘From the count to the princess,’ and hand over a note.
She would have liked to ask where his master was. She would have liked to go home and send him a letter that he should come to her, or to go to him herself. But neither the one, nor the other, nor the third was possible: the bells announcing her arrival were already ringing ahead of her, and Princess Tverskoy’s footman was already standing sideways in the opened door, waiting for her to pass into the inner rooms.
‘The princess is in the garden, you will be announced presently. Would you care to go to the garden?’ another footman in another room asked.
The situation of indecision, of uncertainty, was the same as at home; still worse, because it was impossible to do anything, impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to stay here in an alien society so contrary to her mood; but she was wearing a costume that she knew became her; she was not alone, around her were the customary festive surroundings of idleness, and that made it easier for her than at home. She did not need to invent something to do; everything was being done by itself. Meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown that struck her with its elegance, Anna smiled at her as always. Princess Tverskoy was walking with Tushkevich and a young lady relation who, to the great delight of her provincial parents, was spending the summer with the famous princess.
Probably there was something special in Anna, because Betsy noticed it at once.
‘I slept badly,’ Anna replied, studying the footman who was coming towards them and, she supposed, bringing Vronsky’s note.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ said Betsy. ‘I’m tired and just wanted to have a cup of tea before they arrive. Why don’t you and Masha,’ she turned to Tushkevich, ‘go and try the croquet ground where it’s been cut? You and I will have time for a heart-to-heart talk over tea - we’ll have a cosy chat, won’t we?’ she added in English, turning to Anna with a smile and pressing her hand, which was holding a parasol.
‘The more so as I can’t stay with you long, I must go to see old Vrede. I promised her ages ago,’ said Anna, for whom lying, foreign to her nature, had not only become simple and natural in society, but even gave her pleasure.
Why she had said something that she had not thought of a second before, she would have been quite unable to explain. She had said it only with the idea that, since Vronsky was not coming, she had to secure some freedom for herself and try to see him somehow. But why precisely she had mentioned the old lady-in-waiting Vrede, whom she had to visit no more than many others, she would not have known how to explain, and yet, as it turned out later, had she been inventing the cleverest way of seeing Vronsky, she could have found nothing better.
‘No, I won’t let you go for anything,’ replied Betsy, peering attentively into Anna’s face. ‘Really, if I didn’t love you, I’d be offended. As if you’re afraid my company might compromise you. Please bring us tea in the small drawing room,’ she said, narrowing her eyes as she always did when addressing a footman. She took a note from him and read it. ‘Alexei has made us a false leap,’ she said in French.v ‘He writes that he can’t come,’ she added in such a natural, simple tone as if it never could have entered her head that Vronsky was anything more to Anna than a croquet partner.
Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but, listening to the way she talked about Vronsky, she always had a momentary conviction that she knew nothing.
‘Ah!’ Anna said indifferently, as if it was of little interest to her, and went on with a smile: ‘How could your company compromise anyone?’ This playing with words, this concealment of the secret, held great charm for Anna, as for all women. It was not the need for concealment, not the purpose of the concealment, but the very process of concealment that fascinated her. ‘I cannot be more Catholic than the pope,’ she said. ‘Stremov and Liza Merkalov are the cream of the cream of society. They are also received everywhere, and
