“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you will, gain enough for my little sisters' dowry by the time they will be grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we shall even have enough to live in comfort.”
“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.
“Oh! you and I will be co-workers. I will look after those two until you can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life. We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning, if we only look things in the face.”
The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller's; the pleasant home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by solemn promise to provide shortly.
Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days' wonder was forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.
One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to another of Murray's Guide-Book, arrived at Frankfort and settled there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.
At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he did go, he never measured the length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues in the cathedral-niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven-soaring Smiths on the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer-house; when he went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive Murray nor the ostentatious Byron; and, in fact, he [pg 415] departed altogether from the standard of the regulation British tourist.
He was walking one day down the Juden-Strasse, the picturesqueness of whose mediæval-looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight figure, half-hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand before she had grasped it.
“Oh! thank you, mein Herr!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German. And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.
But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark-clad figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on, slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell at an old forlorn-looking door, where he might have expected to see the face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.