ry next morning a perfect shower of _billets doux_, jewels and
bouquets fell into the poor ballet girl's attic. For a moment she was
dazzled by all this splendor and looked at the gold bracelets, the
brooches set with rubies and emeralds, and at the sparkling earrings,
with flushed cheeks, but then an unspeakable terror of being lost and of
sinking into degradation, seized her, and she pushed the jewels away and
was about to send them back. But as is usual in such cases, her mother
intervened in favor of _the generous gentlemen_, and so the jewels were
accepted, but the notes which accompanied them were not answered at
present. A second and a third discharge of Cupid's artillery followed,
without making any impression on that virtuous girl; in consequence a
greater number of her admirers grew quiet, though some continued to send
her presents, and to assail her with love letters, and one had the
courage to go still further.

He was a wealthy banker, who had just called on the mother of Henrietta,
as we will call the fair-haired ballet girl, and then one evening, quite
unexpectedly, on the girl herself. He by no means met with the reception
which he had expected from the pretty girl in a faded cotton gown;
Henrietta treated him with a certain amount of good humored respect,
which had a much more unpleasant effect on him than that coldness and
prudery, which is so often synonymous with coquetry and selfish
speculation, among a certain class of women. In spite of everything,
however, he soon went to see her daily, and lavished his wealth, without
her asking him for anything, on the beautiful dancer, and he gave her no
chance of refusing, for he relied on the mother for everything. She took
pretty, small apartments for her daughter and herself in the
_Kaerntnerstrasse_ and furnished them elegantly, hired a cook and
housemaid, made an arrangement with a fly-driver, and lastly clothed her
daughter's lovely limbs in silk, velvet and valuable lace.

Henrietta persistently held her tongue at all this; only once she said
to her mother in the presence of the Stock Exchange _Jupiter_:

"Have you won a prize in the lottery?"

"Of course, I have," her mother replied with a laugh.

The girl, however, had given away her heart long before, and quite
contrary to all precedent, to a man whose very name she was ignorant of,
and who sent her no diamonds, and not even any flowers. But he was young
and good-looking, and stood so retiringly