On the Sunday morning after Mina's marriage, young Mrs. von Rambow went through all her housekeeping duties, saw that everything was rightly done in house and dairy, and entered various items on the debtor and the creditor sides of her account book. Having done this, she sat still, trying to master the feeling of undefined anxiety about the state of Alick's affairs that had been worrying her all morning. But she had no notion how very far on the road to ruin her husband's bad management had brought them, for even her fears did not nearly reach the point of reality. She only guessed that Alick was in great want of money from his irritability of temper, and from the restlessness which possessed him, and prevented him from sitting still for long at a time. She had no idea that this embarrassment might be the last, that the knife was already at his throat, and that an accident, or the malice of an enemy might in one moment give him the coup de grace. He had told her nothing; he had only ordered his carriage, and had gone away three days ago. Where had he gone? And to whom? These were questions she had long ceased to ask, for why should she knock at a door behind which she only found dissimulation and lies. She closed her account book with a sigh, and said to herself: "What good does it do? No woman's hand is able to avert ruin from a house." Looking out at the window she saw Fred Triddelfitz sauntering sleepily across the yard, and letting her hands fall into her lap, she murmured: "The responsibility of everything rests on that man's shoulders. It's a blessing that he's honest, and that he was taught by Hawermann.--Oh Hawermann, Hawermann!" she cried aloud, her heart full of sad regretful thoughts. Who has not, at some time in his life, spent an hour such as this, when his thoughts seem to take shape and stand round him like the ghosts of by-gone days, each pointing with a spectral finger to what has become the weak place in his heart? They neither quail nor relent, but stand before him as immovably as a rock pointing at the aching place and shouting in his ears: "You brought all this misery upon yourself by your conduct at such and such a time." But what she had done, she had done from love. That did not make the ghosts draw back--what does a ghost know of love? While she sat there a prey to sad thoughts, Daniel Sadenwater came in, and said that Mr. Pomuchelskopp had called. "Tell him that your master isn't at home," said Frida. Daniel replied that he had already told him so, but that Mr. Pomuchelskopp had expressly begged to see Mrs. von Rambow. "Very well, I'll go and see him in a few minutes," said Frida. She would not have said that if she had not wanted to escape for the moment from the torment her thoughts caused her, for Pomuchelskopp was hateful to her, but still he was a human being, and not a grizzly phantom.