第266页 / 共2288页

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of

his work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and

complicated. He went straight from the cowhouse to the counting

house, and after a little conversation with the bailiff and

Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house and straight

upstairs to the drawing-room.

Chapter 27

The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived

alone, had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this was

stupid, he knew that it was positively not right, and contrary to

his present new plans, but this house was a whole world to Levin.

It was the world in which his father and mother had lived and

died. They had lived just the life that to Levin seemed the ideal

of perfection, and that he had dreamed of beginning with his

wife, his family.