But the place where Levin had been stung was evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he himself cut him short.

“Please don’t go into it!  I can’t help it.  I feel ashamed of how I’m treating you and him.  But it won’t be, I imagine, a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.”

“But it’s insulting to him! Et puis c’est ridicule.”

“And to me it’s both insulting and distressing!  And I’m not at fault in any way, and there’s no need for me to suffer.”

“Well, this I didn’t expect of you! On peut etre jaloux, mais a ce point, c’est du dernier ridicule!”

Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone.  Soon he heard the rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap, was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts.

“What’s this?” Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house and stopped the trap.  It was the mechanician, whom Levin had totally forgotten.  The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Veslovsky, then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together.

Stepan Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset by Levin’s action.  And he himself felt not only in the highest degree ridicule, but also utterly guilty and disgraced.  But remembering what sufferings he and his wife had been through, when he asked himself how he should act another time, he answered that he should do just the same again.

In spite of all this, towards the end of that day, everyone except the princess, who could not pardon Levin’s action, became extraordinarily lively and good humored, like children after a punishment or grown-up people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by the evening Vassenka’s dismissal was spoken of, in the absence of the princess, as though it were some remote event.  And Dolly, who had inherited her father’s gift of humorous storytelling, made Varenka helpless with laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always with fresh humorous additions, how she had only just put on her new shoes for the benefit of the visitor, and on going into the drawing room, heard suddenly the rumble of the trap.  And who should be in the trap but Vassenka himself, with his Scotch cap, and his songs and his gaiters, and all, sitting in the hay.

“If only you’d ordered out the carriage!  But no! and then I hear:  ‘Stop!’ Oh, I thought they’ve relented.  I look out, and behold a fat German being sat down by him and driving away....  And my new shoes all for nothing!...”

Chapter 16