While still outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky's voice.

" If that's one of the villains, don't let him in!" Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room.

Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky's, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making coffee.