ble.

"Auntie, surely you're not angry?" she faltered with a sort of flippant
playfulness.

"Wh-a-a-t?" Varvara Petrovna started, and drew herself up in her chair.
"I'm not your aunt. What are you thinking of?"

Marya Timofyevna, not expecting such an angry outburst, began trembling
all over in little convulsive shudders, as though she were in a fit, and
sank back in her chair.

"I... I... thought that was the proper way," she faltered, gazing
open-eyed at Varvara Petrovna. "Liza called you that."

"What Liza?"

"Why, this young lady here," said Marya Timofyevna, pointing with her
finger.

"So she's Liza already?"

"You called her that yourself just now," said Marya Timofyevna growing
a little bolder. "And I dreamed of a beauty like that," she added,
laughing, as it were accidentally.

Varvara Petrovna reflected, and grew calmer, she even smiled faintly at
Marya Timofyevna's last words; the latter, catching her smile, got up
from her chair, and limping, went timidly towards her.

"Take it. I forgot to give it back. Don't be angry with my rudeness."

She took from her shoulders the black shawl that Varvara Petrovna had
wrapped round her.

"Put it on again at once, and you can keep it always. Go and sit down,
drink your coffee, and please don't be afraid of me, my dear, don't
worry yourself. I am beginning to understand you."

_"Chere amie..."_ Stepan Trofimovitch ventured again.

"Ach, Stepan Trofimovitch, it's bewildering enough without you. You
might at least spare me.... Please ring that bell there, near you, to
the maid's room."

A silence followed. Her eyes strayed irritably and suspiciously over all
our faces. Agasha, her favourite maid, came in.

"Bring me my check shawl, the one I bought in Geneva. What's Darya
Pavlovna doing?"

"She's not very well, madam."

"Go and ask her to come here. Say that I want her particularly, even if
she's not well."

At that instant there was again, as before, an unusual noise of steps
and voices in the next room, and suddenly Praskovya Ivanovna, panting
and "distracted," appeared in the doorway. She was leaning on the arm of
Mavriky Nikolaevitch.

"Ach, heavens, I could scarcely drag myself here. Liza, you mad girl,
how you treat your mother!" she squeaked, concentrating in that squeak,
as weak and irritable people are wont to do, all her accumulated
irritability. "Varvara Petrovna, I've come for my daughter!"

Varvara Petrovna looked at her from under