The Countess tells the story

At the provincial capital Koznyshev is beckoned in by the old Countess Vronskaya, who is travelling with her son as far as Kursk. She tells the story: for six weeks he spoke to no one and ate only when implored, and everything he might kill himself with was taken away — he had shot himself once before on Anna's account. They were on her estate; a note came, he answered it, and they had no idea Anna was at the station. Her maid Mary brought the news that a lady had thrown herself under a train, and the Countess knew at once. The coachman had seen everything and told him; he galloped to the station and was brought back like a corpse — prostration complète, then near raving madness. She calls Anna a bad woman who ruined two splendid men, and says even the death she chose was mean and low. Karenin took the little girl and came to the funeral, kept apart from Vronsky, who now regrets giving up his daughter. The Serbian war, she says, is a godsend; Yashvin, ruined at cards, persuaded him to go. She asks Koznyshev to talk to him — he is sad, and his teeth have started aching.

The death is finally narrated, and Tolstoy gives it to the one witness incapable of pity, so that the facts arrive wrapped in a mother's hatred. Koznyshev's single mild demurral is all the correction offered. The detail that finishes the chapter — his teeth have started aching — sits beside six weeks of silence as though it were of the same order, and in the next chapter it will be.