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And Nina Balatka was prepared to go out into the wilderness. Karil Zamenoy and his wife were prosperous people, and lived in a comfortable modern house in the New Town. It stood in a straight street, and at the back of the house there ran another straight street.

There was not a paper in the desk which did not pass under her eye, and as to which she did not come to some conclusion, either to keep it or to burn it. There were no love-letters there. Nina Balatka had never yet received such a letter as that.

In business with Trendellsohn, the father, there was Anton, his son; and Anton Trendellsohn was the Jew whom Nina Balatka loved. Now it had so happened that Josef Balatka, Nina's father, had drifted out of a partnership with Karil Zamenoy, a wealthy Christian merchant of Prague, and had drifted into a partnership with Trendellsohn.

Castaways such as you are always blind to their own danger; but your father, I hope, has not fallen so far as to care nothing for his religion, though he seems to have forgotten what is due to his family." "I have forgotten nothing," said old Balatka. "Why then do you not forbid her to do this thing?" demanded Madame Zamenoy.

A lane, for it is little more, turning from the main street between the side walls of what were once two palaces, comes suddenly into a small square, and from a corner of this square there is an open stone archway leading into a court. In this court is the door, or doors, as I may say, of the house in which Balatka lived with his daughter Nina.

Nina also was standing close by her father's head, with her hand upon her father's pillow. Balatka groaned, but made no immediate answer. "It is terrible, horrible, abominable, and damnable," said Madame Zamenoy, bringing out one epithet after the other with renewed energy. Balatka groaned again. What could he say in reply to such an address?

He could give without grudging, and yet grudge the benefits which came of his giving. Neither he nor his father had ever positively known in whose custody were the title-deeds which he was so anxious to get into his own hands. Balatka had said that they must be with the Zamenoys, but even Balatka had never spoken as of absolute knowledge.

Sir Harry Hotspur was written on the same plan as Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel, and had for its object the telling of some pathetic incident in life rather than the portraiture of a number of human beings. Nina and Linda Tressel and The Golden Lion had been placed in foreign countries, and this was an English story.

They carried with them but little of the outward signs of wealth, and but few of those appurtenances of comfort which generally fall to the lot of brides among the rich; the man, however, was well to do in the world, and was one who was not likely to bring his wife to want. It need hardly be said that Anton Trendellsohn was the man, and that Nina Balatka was his wife.

Old Balatka did not answer for a while, having turned himself in his bed to think of the proposition which had been made to him. "Would you not like to have me for a son-in-law better than a Jew, uncle Josef?" said Ziska, pleading for himself as best he knew how to plead. "Have you ever spoken to Nina?" said the old man. "Well, no; not exactly to say what I have said to you.