Englishman had been looking at him not as an employer, but as a jockey, he answered:
“I’ve got to go to Bryansky’s; I shall be home within an hour.”
“How often I’m asked that question today!” he said to himself, and he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The Englishman looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Vronsky was going, he added:
“The great thing’s to keep quiet before a race,” said he; “don’t get out of temper or upset about anything.”
“All right,” answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping into his carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.
Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour of rain.
“What a pity!” thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the carriage. “It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp.” As he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his mother’s letter and his brother’s note, and read them through.
Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred—a feeling he had rarely known before. “What business is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just because they see that this is something they can’t understand. If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left me alone. They feel that this is something different, that this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that’s why it annoys them. Whatever our destiny