Late to the paddock

Too preoccupied to read his own watch, Vronsky drives the five miles to Bryansky's, stays five minutes, and gallops back to find the second race already run. At the stables Cord tells him not to upset himself and Frou-Frou stands saddled and trembling. He avoids the fashionable crowd in front of the pavilions, knowing Anna, Betsy and his brother's wife are there. His brother Alexander, a colonel with a drunken open face and a courtier's instincts, delivers their mother's letter while smiling for the benefit of onlookers and remarks that Vronsky was seen in Peterhof on Monday; Alexis's jaw twitches, which those who know him treat as a warning. Oblonsky appears, shining amid the Petersburg brilliancy. Someone points out that Karenin is looking for his wife in the pavilion; Vronsky does not glance that way. Seventeen officers draw their numbers and he gets seven. Cord's last word is not to hold back or urge the mare at an obstacle. Makhotin gallops past and excites her.

Everything that will matter in the race is planted as social business: the brother's warning, the pointed remark about Peterhof, the trainer's instruction. Tolstoy fills the chapter with people telling Vronsky to keep calm on a day he has just learned Anna is pregnant. Kusovlev, riding only because it is dangerous, is placed here to fall first.