of your brother's. .... I have not read it, but this is from Dolly .... imagine it; she has been to take Grisha and Tania to a children's ball at the Sarmatskys'. Tania was dressed like a little marchioness."
But Levin was not listening. With a flushed face he took the letter from Marya Nikolayevna, his brother Nikolaï's discarded mistress, and began to read it. This was already the second time that she had written him. In her first letter she told him that Nikolaï had sent her away without reason, and she added, with touching simplicity, that she asked no assistance and wanted nothing, though she was reduced to penury, but that the thought of what Nikolaï Dmitritch would do without her in his feeble condition was killing her. She begged his brother to look out for him.
Her second letter was in a different tone. She said that she had found Nikolaï Dmitrievitch and was living with him again in Moscow, that she had gone with him to a provincial city, where he had received an appointment. There he had quarreled with the chief, and immediately started for Moscow; but on the way he had been taken so violently ill that he would probably never leave his bed again. "He constantly calls for you, and, besides, we have no money," she wrote.
"Read what Dolly writes about you," Kitty began; but, when she saw her husband's dejected face, she suddenly stopped speaking. Then she said:—
"What is it—what has happened?"
"She writes me that Nikolaï, my brother, is dying. I must go to him."
Kitty's face suddenly changed. The thought of Tania as a little marchioness, of Dolly, and all, vanished.
"When shall you go?"
"To-morrow."
"May I go with you?" she asked.
"Kitty! what an idea!" he replied, reproachfully.
"Why what an idea?" she exclaimed, vexed to see her proposal received with such bad grace. "Why,
