"Ah! your excellency," cried Oblonsky, "are you expecting some one?"
"My matushka," replied Vronsky, with the smile with which people always met Oblonsky. And, after shaking hands, they mounted the staircase side by side. "She was to come from Petersburg to-day."
"I waited for you till two o'clock this morning. Where did you go after leaving the Shcherbatskys'?"
"Home," replied Vronsky. "To tell the truth, after such a pleasant evening at the Shcherbatskys', I did not feel like going anywhere."
"I know fiery horses by their brand, and young people who are in love by their eyes," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, in the same dramatic tone in which he had spoken to Levin the afternoon before.
Vronsky smiled, as much as to say that he did not deny it; but he hastened to change the conversation.
"And whom have you to meet?" he asked.
"I? a very pretty woman," said Oblonsky.
"Ah! indeed!"
"Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna!"
"Akh! Madame Karenina!" exclaimed Vronsky.
"Do you know her, then?"
"It seems to me that I do. Or, no .... the truth is, I don't think I do," replied Vronsky, somewhat confused. The name Karenin dimly brought to his mind a tiresome and conceited person.
"But Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you must know him! Every one knows him."
"That is, I know him by reputation, and by sight. I know that he is talented, learned, and rather adorable .... but you know that he is not .... not in my line," said Vronsky in English.
"Yes; he is a very remarkable man, somewhat conservative, but a splendid man," replied Stepan Arkadyevitch. "A splendid man."
"Well! so much the better for him," said Vronsky, smiling. "Ah! here you are," he cried, seeing his mother's old lackey standing at the door. "Come this way," he added.
