Levin’s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits, and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious conversations between Kitty’s parents as to her future, and to disputes between them.  The prince was on Levin’s side; he said he wished for nothing better for Kitty.  The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty was too young, that Levin had done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and she did not understand him.  When Levin had abruptly departed, the princess was delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly:  “You see I was right.”  When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she was still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was to make not simply a good, but a brilliant match.

In the mother’s eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and Levin.  She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride and his queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and peasants.  She did not very much like it that he, who was in love with her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks, as though he were waiting for something, inspecting, as though he were afraid he might be doing them too great an honor by making an offer, and did not realize that a man, who continually visits at a house where there is a young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear.  And suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared.  “It’s as well he’s not attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,” thought the mother.

Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s desires.  Very wealthy, clever, of aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army and at court, and a fascinating man.  Nothing better could be wished for.

Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and came continually to the house, consequently there could be no doubt of the seriousness of his intentions.  But, in spite of that, the mother had spent the whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety and agitation.

Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years ago, her aunt arranging the match.  Her husband, about whom everything was well known before hand, had come, looked at his future bride, and been looked at.  The match-making aunt had ascertained and communicated their mutual impression.  That impression had been favorable.  Afterwards, on a day fixed beforehand, the expected offer was made to her parents, and accepted.  All had passed very simply and easily.  So it seemed, at least, to the princess.  But over her own daughters she had felt how far from simple and easy is the business,