Ziska got up to go, but as he did so he fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a little bundle of bank-notes. A bundle of bank-notes in Prague may be not little, and yet represent very little money. When bank-notes are passed for two-pence and become thick with use, a man may have a great mass of paper currency in his pocket without being rich. On this occasion, however, Ziska tendered to his uncle no two-penny notes. There was a note for five florins, and two or three for two florins, and perhaps half-a-dozen for a florin each, so that the total amount offered was sufficient to be of real importance to one so poor as Josef Balatka. "This will help you awhile," said Ziska, "and if Nina will come round and be a good girl, neither you nor she shall want anything; and she need not be afraid of mother, if she will only do as I say." Balatka had put out his hand and had taken the money, when the bedroom door was opened, and Nina came in. "What, Ziska," said she, "are you here?" "Why not? why should I not see my uncle?" "It is very good of you, certainly; only, as you never came before--" "I mean it for kindness, now I have come, at any rate," said Ziska. "Then I will take it for kindness," said Nina. "Why should there be quarrelling among relatives?" said the old man from among the bed-clothes. "Why, indeed?" said Ziska. "Why, indeed," said Nina, "--if it could be helped?" She knew that the outward serenity of the words spoken was too good to be a fair representation of thoughts below in the mind of any of them. It could not be that Ziska had come there to express even his own consent to her marriage with Anton Trendellsohn; and without such consent there must of necessity be a continuation of quarrelling. "Have you been speaking to father, Ziska, about those papers?" Nina was determined that there should be no glozing of matters, no soft words used effectually to stop her in her projected course. So she rushed at once at the subject which she thought most important in Ziska's presence. "What papers?" said Ziska. "The papers which belong to Anton Trendellsohn about this house and the others. They are his, and you would not wish to keep things which belong to another, even though he should be a--Jew." Then it occurred to Ziska that Trendellsohn might be willing to give up Nina if he got the papers, and that Nina might be willing to be free from the Jew by the same arrangement. It could not be that such a girl as Nina Balatka should prefer the love of a Jew to the love of a Christian. So at least Ziska argued in his own mind. "I do not want to keep anything that belongs to anybody," said Ziska. "If the papers are with us, I am willing that they should be given up--that is, if it be right that they should be given up." "It is right," said Nina. "I believe the Trendellsohns should have them--either father or son," said old Balatka. "Of course they should have them," said Nina; "either father or son--it makes no matter which."