ch.

As he was thus engaged, the Fraulein entered. She was dressed in a sort
of brown serge, which, though of the humblest tissue, showed her figure
to great advantage, for it fitted to perfection, and designed the
graceful lines' of her shoulders, and her taper waist to great
advantage. She saluted me with the faintest possible smile, and said:
"You are come to dine with us?"

"If there be enough to give him to eat," said the old man, gruffly. "I
have brought him here, however, with other thoughts. There was something
said last night,--what was it, girl?--something about this lad,--do you
remember it?"

"Here is the soup, father," said she, calmly. "We'll bethink us of these
things by and by." There was a strange air of half-command in what she
said, the tone of one who asserted a certain supremacy, as I was soon
to see she did in the household. "Sit here, Herr von Owen," said she,
pointing to my place, and her words were uttered like an order.

In perfect silence the meal went on; a woman-servant entering to replace
the soup by a dish of boiled meat, but not otherwise waiting on us,
for Sara rose and removed our plates and served us with fresh ones,--an
office I would gladly have taken from her, and indeed essayed to do, but
at a gesture, and a look that there was no mistaking, I sat down again,
and, unmindful of my presence, they soon began to talk of business
matters, in which, to my astonishment, the young girl seemed thoroughly
versed. Cargoes of grain for Athens consigned to one house, were now to
be transferred to some other. There were large orders from France
for staves, to meet which some one should be promptly despatched into
Hungary. Hemp, too, was wanted for England. There was a troublesome
litigation with an Insurance Company at Marseilles, which was evidently
going against the House of Oppovich. So unlike was all this the tone of
dinner conversation I was used to that I listened in wonderment how they
could devote the hour of social enjoyment and relaxation to details so
perplexing and so vulgar.

"There is that affair of the leakage, too," cried Herr Ignaz, setting
down his glass before drinking; "I had nigh forgotten it."

"I answered the letter this morning," said the girl, gravely. "It is
better it should be settled at once, while the exchanges are in our
favor."

"And pay--pay the whole amount," cried he, angrily.

"Pay it all," replied she, calmly. "We must not let them call us
litigious,