al case."

"Marietta Volkmar is the grandchild of our good old doctor at Waldhofen.
His son died while still in the flower of youth. The young widow
followed her husband the very next year, and the poor little orphan came
to her grandfather. That was ten years ago, just after I had been
assigned to Fuerstenstein. Doctor Volkmar became our family physician,
and his grandchild the playfellow of my children. As the school in
Waldhofen was a miserable affair, I begged the doctor to permit his
little one to come here and share the childrens' instruction. Then while
Toni was at boarding-school for two years, Marietta was in the city
pursuing her musical education, and, as a matter of course, their daily
intercourse ceased. Marietta, however, has always visited us regularly
during her vacations, when she came home to her grandfather, and I do
not see why I should forbid her doing so as long as she remains
respectable and honest."

Frau von Eschenhagen had listened to this reasonable explanation without
unbending in the least. She now said spitefully:

"Respectable and honest in a theatre! Every one knows well enough what
goes on in such iniquitous places; but you seem to take it as lightly as
does Dr. Volkmar, who for that matter looks honest and venerable enough
with his open face and long white hair. How he can send a soul
entrusted to his care, his own flesh and blood at that, on to certain
destruction, is beyond my comprehension."

"Regine, I always thought you a most rational woman, but in this matter
you have no sense at all. The theatre and every one connected with it
has always been proscribed by you, and yet you know absolutely nothing
about it. It was no easy matter for the doctor to allow Marietta to go
on the stage. That I know, for we talked it over frequently. It is not
for us who sit in warm nests and can provide lavishly for our children,
to sit in judgment upon other parents who earn their daily food with
labor and bitter care. Volkmar, though seventy years of age, works day
and night, but his practice brings him in little, for this is a poor,
sparsely settled neighborhood, and after his death Marietta will have
nothing."

"Then he should have made a teacher or a companion of her; that is a
decent way to earn one's bread."

"God preserve me from bread so earned. No one knows how the poor thing
would be used and ill treated. If I had a child who was dearer to me
than life, whose fate it was to earn her o