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Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the

words. But her mother saw them in a different light. She knew

that the old lady was expected from day to day, that she would be

pleased at her son's choice, and she felt it strange that he

should not make his offer through fear of vexing his mother.

However, she was so anxious for the marriage itself, and still

more for relief from her fears, that she believed it was so.

Bitter as it was for the princess to see the unhappiness of her

eldest daughter, Dolly, on the point of leaving her husband, her

anxiety over the decision of her youngest daughter's fate

engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Levin's reappearance, a

fresh source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter,

who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might,

from extreme sense of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin's

arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near

being concluded.