there was another item in the bill which he had overlooked, and the Don Giovanni was not a little surprised, therefore, when he failed after all. Little Marguerite had a soft heart, thirsting after love, and she had so small a share of love alloted her in life! Hence Albert Timm had been able to overcome the heart of the girl, but not her virtue. For little Marguerite was proud--proud as poor beings are who have been enslaved and ill-treated from childhood up without losing their native nobility, and whose only defence against the contempt of the world lies in their self-respect. She would have sacrificed for her lover the whole of her hard-earned little fortune, but nothing else. If Albert could not succeed who really loved her, Felix must of course fail, for she detested him. And yet he was not fastidious in the means he employed. He presented Albert to her in the darkest colors; he laughed at the poor girl for having allowed herself to be cheated by a man who wanted nothing but her few hundred dollars; a man who would do anything for money, and who would yet gamble away in a single night all the money he might have secured by fair means or foul. He effected by this description, which was unfortunately not untrue in its main features, nothing but that the little one said with flaming eyes and deep-red cheeks in her broken German: "And if _Monsieur Albert_ is really a bad man, you are not any better by a hair, _Monsieur le Baron_!" Poor child! she was soon to become fully aware that _Monsieur Albert_ and _Monsieur le Baron_ were really of precisely the same value! She had been in the adjoining room when Felix and Albert Timm had been holding their conversation, and she had felt as if she ought to sink into the ground for shame and indignation when she heard how the two gentlemen bargained so unceremoniously for her virtue, as if they had bargained for a horse. To dispel every doubt as to what she had only half understood, she had managed to meet Mr. Timm when he left the baron in the ante-room. Here she had asked him, hot-blooded as she was, about the matter, and received an answer which caused her to be bathed in tears, when Mr. Bemperlein came in a few minutes later.