Ivanovna described the purport of his letter.

Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues
against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed
in haste, as she had that day to be at the meeting of some
society and also at the Slavonic committee.

"It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn't
notice it before?" Anna asked herself. "Or has she been very
much irritated today? It's really ludicrous; her object is doing
good; she a Christian, yet she's always angry; and she always has
enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing
good."

After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a
chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three
o'clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the
time till dinner in assisting at her son's dinner (he dined apart
from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in
reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated
on her table.

The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the
journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In
the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and
irreproachable.

She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day.
"What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it
was easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have
done. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out
of the question. To speak of it would be to attach importance to
what has no importance." She remembered how she had told her
husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg
by a young man, one of her husband's subordinates, and how Alexey
Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world
was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest
confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by
jealousy. "So then there's no reason to speak of it? And
indeed, thank God, there's nothing to speak of," she told
herself.

Chapter 33

Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers
at four o'clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come
in to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for
him with petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his
chief secretary. At dinner time (there were always a few people