Vronsky arrives; the table-turning quarrel

The Princess comes in, sees at once that Kitty has refused him, and brightens. Countess Nordston arrives and resumes her favourite amusement, baiting Levin about his calling Moscow 'depraved Babylon' and about the peasants on her Kaluga estate. Then Vronsky enters, and Levin, watching Kitty's eyes brighten involuntarily, knows she loves him. Being the sort of man who looks for a rival's merits, he finds them immediately: everything about Vronsky is simple and elegant at once. The talk turns to table-turning; Levin says spiritualism proves the educated class is level with the peasants who see goblins, and presses his argument about electricity past the point a drawing-room can hold. Vronsky twice rescues the conversation. The old Prince arrives, greets Levin warmly and Vronsky coldly, and dismisses the experiment in favour of hunt the ring. Levin slips out on the sight of Kitty's happy face.

Tolstoy's method for a rival: make him genuinely likeable and let the wronged man see it. Vronsky's good manners do the work here, smoothing every edge Levin raises, which is exactly the charge against him. The two proposals of the evening are separated by an hour and staged in the same room, and only the reader sees both.