She nodded in Stepan Trofimovitch's direction without breaking off from what she was doing, and when the latter muttered some sort of greeting, she hurriedly gave him her hand, and without looking at him motioned him to a seat beside her.
"I sat waiting for five minutes, 'mastering my heart,'" he told me afterwards.

"I saw before me not the woman whom I had known for twenty years.

An absolute conviction that all was over gave me a strength which astounded even her.

I swear that she was surprised at my stoicism in that last hour." Varvara Petrovna suddenly put down her pencil on the table and turned quickly to Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Stepan Trofimovitch, we have to talk of business.

I'm sure you have prepared all your fervent words and various phrases, but we'd better go straight to the point, hadn't we ?" She had been in too great a hurry to show the tone she meant to take.
And what might not come next?
"Wait, be quiet; let me speak.