se to themselves, with large high rooms, and every day she
received visits from the richest women of the town, and visited them in
return. There was never a betrothal, marriage, or christening in a
well-known family to which she was not invited; every child in the
street knew her and smiled at her; and the suppers in her hospitable
house were renowned as far as Russia and Sweden.

The marriage was blessed by one daughter, who grew up to be a rather
pretty, well-mannered, and well-grown girl. Her horizon stretched from
the storeroom to the linen-press, and from the flatiron to her book of
songs. She felt a high esteem for her father--just as everyone does for
a rich man--and for her mother, if hardly love, at least a boundless
respect. She regarded her as almost more than human, and the care with
which she listened to her mother's instructions into the secrets of the
kitchen, the market, and the linen-room, was almost unnatural. She was
afraid she would never attain to the fluctuations of price in the fish
market in different seasons of the year, the starching of muslins, the
time it took to cook a pudding, and how much sugar went to a pot of
preserved fruit; and her mother destroyed the last remnant of
self-confidence when half-pityingly, half-contemptuously she told her
that she was not sufficiently developed to understand such things. When
Fraulein Brohl was old enough, her parents married her to Herr Marker.
It was hardly a love match, but in Brohl, Son & Company's house such
folly as love was not considered. Herr Marker was the son of a
wholesale coffee-merchant, and was neither handsome nor
distinguished-looking; he was small, thin, bandy-legged, with an
unwholesome complexion, a peevish expression, and almost bald-headed.

Herr F.A. Brohl soon found that he had made a mistake, and been in too
great a hurry. The old Marker lost his fortune in an unlucky
speculation during the Crimean War, and was only saved by Brohl from
the shame of bankruptcy. He died soon afterward of grief, and left his
son nothing but debts. The young Marker showed no special genius for
the coffee business, but an uncomfortable ambition for speculation in
stocks. He opened an exchange office, and entered into transactions
with the Exchanges of Berlin, Frankfort, and Amsterdam, and after a
short time the last penny of his wife's dowry disappeared. His
father-in-law dipped into his pockets and renewed the dowry, but
stipulated that Marker in th