The third circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the
fashionable world--the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous
dresses, the world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as
to avoid sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For the
demi-monde the members of that fashionable world believed that
they despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but
in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was kept up
through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin's wife, who had an
income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and who had
taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first came out, showed
her much attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of
Countess Lidia Ivanovna's coterie.

"When I'm old and ugly I'll be the same," Betsy used to say; "but
for a pretty young woman like you it's early days for that house
of charity."

Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess
Tverskaya's world, because it necessitated an expenditure beyond
her means, and besides in her heart she preferred the first
circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done quite the
contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went out
into the fashionable world. There she met Vronsky, and
experienced an agitating joy at those meetings. She met Vronsky
specially often at Betsy's for Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and
his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he had any chance of
meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he could, of his love.
She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met him there
surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that
had come upon her that day in the railway carriage when she saw
him for the first time. She was conscious herself that her
delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips into a smile,
and she could not quench the expression of this delight.