from him, in the course of conversation, what dishonourable means Grünlich had used to get hold of the eighty thousand marks; but the Consul was careful to give the matter no publicity. He did not even consider going to the courts with it. He felt wounded in his pride as a merchant, and he wrestled silently with the disgrace of having been so thoroughly taken in.
But he pressed the divorce suit energetically as soon as the failure of Grünlich came out, which it soon did, thereby causing no inconsiderable losses to certain Hamburg firms. It was this suit, and the thought that she herself was a principal in it, that gave Tony her most delicious and indescribable feelings of importance.
“Father,” she said—for in these conversations she never called him “Papa”—“Father, how is our affair going on? Do you think it will be all right? The paragraph is perfectly clear; I have studied it. ‘Incapacity of the husband to provide for his family’: surely they will say that is quite plain. If there were a son, Grünlich would keep him—”
Another time she said: “I have thought a great deal about the four years of my marriage, Father. That was certainly the reason the man never wanted us to live in the town, which I was so anxious to do. That was the reason he never liked me even to be in the town or go into society. The danger was much greater there than in Eimsbiittel, of my hearing somehow or other how things stood. What a scoundrel!”
“We must not judge, my child,” answered the Consul.
Or, when the divorce was finally pronounced: “Have you entered it in the family papers, Father? No? Then I’d better do it. Please give me the key to the secretary.” With bustling pride she wrote, beneath the lines she had set there four years ago under her name: “This marriage was dissolved by law in February, 1850.” Then she put away the pen and reflected a minute.
“Father,” she said, “I understand very well that this affair is a blot on our family history. I have thought about it a
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