Mizzi, sitting up very straight in a mauve arm chair, was measuring with a tape measure lengths of pale shining French ribbons, billowing over a little grey table. She was a woman in the early thirties, with dark eyes inclining to opacity, abundant dark hair and an agreeable, smooth, rather bright complexion, pleasant enough to look at, though her features were negligible. She held herself very erect, even as she sat there was no lolling or relaxing, and when she stood that full, smart figure of hers was impressive, even commanding. Pauli who detested her, said she ought to have been a midwife, though perhaps in that he was unjust to the profession; but it was undeniable that Mizzi had an eye that in a few years would, as he had further remarked, have no more expression than a hard boiled egg confronted with arriving mortality. The little table was drawn up by the window with its lavender hangings striped yellow by light and years, and held back by faded ribbons. It was all quite different from the smart freshness of the shop where was Mizzi's heart. Between the windows was a picture of the Prague Gate and in rummaging about she had unearthed, for less than a song, a fine old engraving of Wallenstein conspiring at Pilsen. Where could one find a more loyal Czecho-Slovak than Mizzi Bruckner, bound hand and foot to Austria?--Till she got to that little shop in Carlsbad, over how many dead bodies she cared not--that little shop especially designed for easing foreigners of their golden loads, that she was unswervingly headed towards and would inevitably reach. As they entered aunt and nephew gave each other an involuntary look of relief. They had made it. "Well, Tante Ilde, how are you?" Mizzi asked amiably enough as she looked up, but there was something steely in her tone. She had no objection to Tante Ilde, except that Tante Ilde was so definitely, and it was easy to prophesy, permanently in the class of poor relations, and to such a certain tone came spontaneously to her voice. No trace of the sugary accents that she used in speaking to the large, dark women who made commerce take its only steps in the paralyzed city. She was polite, but she was cold beyond the power of any thermometer to register. Of her husband, Mizzi took not the slightest notice. Frau Stacher felt something shrink and shrivel in her. A shameful consciousness of being very poor, of being very old, of being very useless tinted her pale cheeks. She hadn't wanted to come to Mizzi's. She had known that she would feel just that way if she did. They all knew about Mizzi, hard as a rock, somebody for the old, the feeble, the dependent to steer clear of.