The tale of Wenden's wife

Vronsky entertains Betsy with the story he has been living for three days. Two young men who had lunched not wisely but too well chased a pretty woman's sledge, followed her to the top flat of the house where they were dining, and after a farewell dinner carried up a letter full of passion, only to be thrown out by a gentleman with sausage-shaped whiskers who announced that no one but his wife lived there. The pair are a Titular Councillor and his wife; the Councillor has lodged a complaint; Vronsky is the peacemaker — 'Talleyrand was nothing to me'. Behind the anecdote lies the fact that Petritsky and young Prince Kedrov are of his squadron, that Wenden's wife was pregnant and frightened, and that the regiment's honour is at stake. Vronsky reports to his Commander at the French Theatre; the C.O. laughs, lets the matter drop, and turns to the new actress Clare.

Tolstoy tells the incident twice — as Vronsky's drawing-room anecdote and as Wenden's complaint — and the gap between them is the chapter. The frightened pregnant woman exists only in the second telling. Vronsky's charm is shown doing exactly what it will do to Anna: converting someone else's humiliation into an amusing evening.