It was evident that the "flabby" woman had prepared them and gloated beforehand over the effect they would produce.

But Varvara Petrovna was not the woman to be disconcerted by sentimental effects and enigmas.

She sternly demanded the most precise and satisfactory explanations.

Praskovya Ivanovna immediately lowered her tone and even ended by dissolving into tears and expressions of the warmest friendship.

This irritable but sentimental lady, like Stepan Trofimovitch, was for ever yearning for true friendship, and her chief complaint against her daughter Lizaveta Nikolaevna was just that "her daughter was not a friend to her." But from all her explanations and outpourings nothing certain could be gathered but that there actually had been some sort of quarrel between Liza and Nikolay, but of the nature of the quarrel Praskovya Ivanovna was obviously unable to form a definite idea.