Vronsky does his accounts

Vronsky hates disorder, having once been humiliated by a refused loan in the Cadet Corps, and five or six times a year shuts himself up to clear his affairs — faire la lessive. The morning after the races he spreads out his money and bills. He owes seventeen thousand and has eighteen hundred. Four thousand must be found at once: fifteen hundred for a horse and twenty-five hundred for standing security when young Venevsky lost to a card-sharper in his presence. Another two thousand will settle the stables, the oats dealer, the Englishman and the saddler; shops, hotels and the tailor can wait. He is not in fact the man with a hundred thousand a year that everyone supposes: he made over his father's income to his elder brother on marriage, keeping twenty-five thousand, and his mother, having quarrelled with him over Anna, has stopped the twenty thousand she added. He will not take her money as a bribe and cannot take back the gift. So he will borrow ten thousand, cut expenses and sell his racehorses. Then he burns three of Anna's notes.

The accounts are given in full because they decide the plot: Anna's future depends on a man whose income has just been halved by his mother's disapproval. Tolstoy notes the universal error — everyone believes his own complications unique — and then grants that Vronsky's generosity to his brother was real. The burnt letters are ordinary prudence and read as a disposal.