“What will it all come to, Fritz?” This Malchen asked with real anxiety in her voice. She was not slow to join two things together. It might well be that her mother should be induced by her pride to carry on the business for a while, so as to lose some of her money, but that she should, at last, be induced to see the error of her ways before serious damage had been done. Her financial position was too good to be brought to ruin by small losses. But during the period of her discomfiture she certainly would not be got to open her hand in that matter of the mitgift. Malchen’s own little affair would never get itself settled till this other question should have arranged itself satisfactorily. There could be no mitgift from a failing business. And if the business were to continue to fail for the next year or two, where would Malchen be then? It was not, therefore, wonderful that she should be in earnest. “Your mother is a very clever woman,” said the lover. “It seems to me that she is very foolish about this,” said Malchen, whose feeling of filial reverence was not at the moment very strong. “She is a clever woman, and has done uncommonly well in the world. The place is worth double as much as when she married your father. But it is that very success which makes her obstinate. She thinks that she can see her way. She fancies that she can compel people to work for her and deal with her at the old prices. It will take her, perhaps, a couple of years to find out that this is wrong. When she has lost three or four thousand florins she’ll come round.” Fritz, as he said this, seemed to be almost contented with this view of the case,--as though it made no difference to him. But with the fraulein the matter was so essentially personal that she could not allow it to rest there. She had made up her mind to be round with her mother; but it seemed to her to be necessary, also, that something should be said to her lover. “Won’t all that be very bad for you, Fritz?” “Her business with me will go on just the same.” This was felt to be unkind and very unloverlike. But she could not afford at the present moment to quarrel with him. “I mean about our settling,” she said. “It ought not to make a difference.” “I don’t know about ought;--but won’t it? You don’t see her as I do, but, of course, it puts her into a bad temper.” “I suppose she means to give you some fixed sum. I don’t doubt but she has it all arranged in her own mind.” “Why doesn’t she name it, then?” “Ah, my dear,--mein schatz,--there is nobody who likes too well to part with his money.” “But when is there to be an end of it?”