" Why has she given up sending the children and coming to see us?" Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her.

Kitty answered perfectly truly.

She did not know the reason Anna Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it.

She guessed at something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not put into words to herself.

It was one of those things which one knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself, so terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.