betha Prokofievna without the least emotion; the tears of this
sorrowful mother did not evoke answering sighs--in fact, she laughed at
her. She was a dreadful old despot, this princess; she could not allow
equality in anything, not even in friendship of the oldest standing, and
she insisted on treating Mrs. Epanchin as her protegee, as she had been
thirty-five years ago. She could never put up with the independence and
energy of Lizabetha's character. She observed that, as usual, the whole
family had gone much too far ahead, and had converted a fly into an
elephant; that, so far as she had heard their story, she was persuaded
that nothing of any seriousness had occurred; that it would surely
be better to wait until something _did_ happen; that the prince, in
her opinion, was a very decent young fellow, though perhaps a little
eccentric, through illness, and not quite as weighty in the world as one
could wish. The worst feature was, she said, Nastasia Philipovna.

Lizabetha Prokofievna well understood that the old lady was angry at the
failure of Evgenie Pavlovitch--her own recommendation. She returned
home to Pavlofsk in a worse humour than when she left, and of course
everybody in the house suffered. She pitched into everyone, because, she
declared, they had 'gone mad.' Why were things always mismanaged in her
house? Why had everybody been in such a frantic hurry in this matter?
So far as she could see, nothing whatever had happened. Surely they had
better wait and see what was to happen, instead of making mountains out
of molehills.

And so the conclusion of the matter was that it would be far better to
take it quietly, and wait coolly to see what would turn up. But, alas!
peace did not reign for more than ten minutes. The first blow dealt to
its power was in certain news communicated to Lizabetha Prokofievna as
to events which bad happened during her trip to see the princess. (This
trip had taken place the day after that on which the prince had turned
up at the Epanchins at nearly one o'clock at night, thinking it was
nine.)

The sisters replied candidly and fully enough to their mother's
impatient questions on her return. They said, in the first place, that
nothing particular had happened since her departure; that the prince
had been, and that Aglaya had kept him waiting a long while before
she appeared--half an hour, at least; that she had then come in, and
immediately asked the prince to have a game of chess; th