trong attachment; her appearance was sufficiently
womanly and charming, and her steady, practical views on things,
utterly unromantic an unenthusiastic, harmonized entirely with his own.
It was refreshing for him to hear her chatter about people and things
with the calm good sense of a Philistine, especially in a society where
the bombastic and exaggerated talk of original, poetically minded young
ladies had repelled and bored him. At his first meeting with Malvine
Marker he had thought that she was the wife for him, and since he had
become friendly with her and her circle, he said to himself, "This one
and no other."

The three ladies liked him immensely. Frau Brohl took him at once to
her heart, and that was the chief consideration. His appearance made a
good impression on her. He was strongly built, not too thin, in fact,
showing signs of a respectable probable stoutness in later life; his
face was full, and his complexion healthy, his mustache carefully
trimmed, and his hair closely cropped; he certainly dressed well. The
young men of her former rich acquaintances were of the same type, so
also was the late F.A. Brohl when she first met him. He was
gentlemanly, without a doubt, and he must be well off to employ such a
good tailor and friseur. She also noticed, with an immense
satisfaction, that he had a due appreciation of fancy work. He did not,
like some superficial people, regard these housewifely creations as
merely pretty or useful things, but appreciated them as works of art,
and wondered at the difficulty of these marvelous fabrications.
Complicated lace-work, or embroidered pictures, filled him with
amazement, even if applique had no effect on him. When Frau Brohl
noticed these marks of distinction in him, she did not hesitate to
invite him to dinner on Sunday--at first occasionally, and afterward
regularly, and with increasing pleasure she noticed that in other ways
he also reached the ideal she had imagined in him. He had a good
appetite, and it was not necessary for him to say in words how much he
enjoyed the dishes set before him, every look and gesture showed it
plainly. He evinced a warm sympathy for family events, even when they
did not concern him in any way, and he had the same genuine esteem for
rich people, which had been handed down for three generations in the
Brohl-Marker families. She thought that he showed no disinclination to
be her granddaughter's husband, only at first she pondered over hi