_II_


Stepan Arkadyevitch was naturally idle, yet his natural gifts had
enabled him to do well at school, and he had gained an excellent
position at Moscow as _natchalnik_, or president of one of the courts,
through the influence of Aleksei Alexandrovitch Karenin, husband of his
sister Anna, one of the most important members of the ministry. In this
office Stepan enjoyed a salary of 6,000 roubles. Everyone who knew
Oblonsky liked him, for his amiability, honesty, and brilliance,
qualities which rendered him a most attractive character.

Going to his office after his unpleasant interview with his wife, he
attended to matters in the court for some time, and on suspending
business for lunch found his friend Levin waiting to see him--a
fair-complexioned, broad-shouldered man whom he often saw in Moscow.
Levin frequently came in from the country, full of enthusiasm about
great things he had been attempting, at the reports of which Stepan was
apt to smile in his good-humoured style. That Levin was in love with his
sister Kitty was well enough known to Stepan.

When Oblonsky on this occasion, after chatting over some rural concerns
in Levin's district, asked his friend what had specially brought him to
Moscow, Levin blushed and was vexed with himself for blushing. He could
not bring himself to reply that he had come to ask for the hand of
Stepan's sister-in-law Kitty, though that was really his errand. As a
student and a friend of the Shcherbatsky family, belonging like his own
to the old nobility of Moscow, Konstantin Levin at first thought himself
in love with Dolly, the eldest, but she married Oblonsky; then with