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"I was looking out for you till two o'clock last night. Where did

you go after the Shtcherbatskys'?"

"Home," answered Vronsky. "I must own I felt so well content

yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys' that I didn't care to go

anywhere."

"I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,

And by his eyes I know a youth in love,"

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to

Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not

deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.

"And whom are you meeting?" he asked.

"I? I've come to meet a pretty woman," said Oblonsky.

"You don't say so!"

"Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna."

"Ah! that's Madame Karenina," said Vronsky.

"You know her, no doubt?"

"I think I do. Or perhaps not ... I really am not sure," Vronsky

answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff

and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.

"But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you

surely must know. All the world knows him."