As she is dancing, her mother enters, and bids her to stop--dancing is a sin.
Lipotchka refuses, and an acrimonious wrangle ensues between mother and daughter, about things in general.

The mother reproaches Lipotchka for her ways, reminds her that her parents have educated her, and so forth.

To this Lipotchka retorts that other people have taught her all she knows--and why have her parents refused that gentleman of good birth who has asked for her hand?
Is he not a Cupid?
(she pronounces it "Capid.") There is no living with them, and so forth.

The female match-maker comes to inform them how she is progressing in her search for a proper match for Lipotchka, and the latter declares stoutly, that she will never marry a merchant.

The match-maker, a famous figure in old Russia life, and irresistibly comic on the stage, habitually addresses her clients as, "my silver ones," "my golden ones," "my emerald ones," "my brilliant (or diamond) ones," which she pronounces "bralliant." Matters are nearly arranged for Lipotchka's marriage with a man of good birth.
Old Bolshoff, however, is represented as being in a financial position where he can take his choice between paying all his debts and being thus left penniless but honest; and paying his creditors nothing, or, at most, a quarter of their dues, and remaining rich enough to indulge in the luxury of a noble son-in-law, the only motive on whose part for such a marriage being, naturally, the bride's dowry.
Old Bolshoff decides to defraud his creditors, with the aid of a pettifogging lawyer, and he makes over all his property to his clerk, Podkhaliuzin.