"Allow me, madam. . . . Allow me." Pyotr Petrovitch waved her off. "Your papa as you are well aware I had not the honour of knowing" (someone laughed aloud) "and I do not intend to take part in your everlasting squabbles with Amalia Ivanovna. . . . I have come here to speak of my own affairs . . . and I want to have a word with your stepdaughter, Sofya . . . Ivanovna, I think it is? Allow me to pass."
Pyotr Petrovitch, edging by her, went to the opposite corner where Sonia was.
Katerina Ivanovna remained standing where she was, as though thunderstruck. She could not understand how Pyotr Petrovitch could deny having enjoyed her father's hospitility. Though she had invented it herself, she believed in it firmly by this time. She was struck too by the businesslike, dry and even contemptuous
