d by his tight uniform. He had
to pass them on his way. "Truly is it said that all the world is
evil," he thought, with another sidelong glance at the calves of
the gentleman of the bedchamber.

Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with his
customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had
been talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes
sought Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!" said the little old man, with a
malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin was on a
level with them, and was nodding with a frigid gesture, "I
haven't congratulated you yet," said the old man, pointing to his
newly received ribbon.

"Thank you," answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. "What an _exquisite_
day to-day," he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the
word _exquisite_.

That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect
anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.

Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting
out above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to
her, Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white
teeth, and went towards her.

Lidia Ivanovna's dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all
her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the
reverse of that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her
desire had been to adorn herself with something, and the more
adorned the better. Now, on the contrary, she was perforce
decked out in a way so inconsistent with her age and her figure,
that her one anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between
these adornments and her own exterior should not be too
appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she
succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the
one island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst
of the sea of hostility and jeering that surrounded him.

Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally
to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.

"I congratulate you," she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders,
closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a
source of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well
aware that it was one of his chief sources of satisfaction,
though he never admitted it.

"How is our angel?" said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, me