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.”
“Chère 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!”