`There's one thing... that old love affair of Varenka's,' she said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. `I should have liked to say something to Sergei Ivanovich, to prepare him. They're all - all men, I mean,' - she added, `awfully jealous over our past.'

`Not all,' said Dolly. `You judge by your own husband. It makes him miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? that's true, isn't it?'

`Yes', Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.

`But I really don't know,' the mother put in in defense of her motherly care of her daughter, `what there was in your past that could worry him? That Vronsky paid you attentions - that happens to every girl.'

`Oh, yes, but we didn't mean that,' Kitty said, flushing a little

`No, let me speak,' her mother went on, `why, you yourself would not let me have a talk with Vronsky. Don't you remember?'

`Oh, mamma!' said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.

`There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it's not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself.'

`I'm perfectly calm, maman.'

`How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then,' said Dolly, `and how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,' she said, struck by her own ideas. `Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.'

`A fine person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman - no heart,' said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but Levin.

`What do you want to talk of it for?' Kitty said with annoyance. `I never think about it, and I don't want to think of it.... And I don't want to think of it,' she said, catching the sound of her husband's familiar step on the steps of the terrace.

`What's that you don't want to think about?' inquired Levin, coming onto the terrace.

But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.

`I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine kingdom,' he said, looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.

For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agathya Mikhailovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and, on the whole, at the outside, Shcherbatsky authority. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.

`Well, how are you?' he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now.

`Oh, very well,' said Kitty, smiling, `and how have things gone with you?'

`The wagon held three times as much as the telega did. Well, are we going for the children? I've ordered the horses to be put in.'

`What! You want to take Kitty in the wide droshky?' her mother said reproachfully.