Props [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE Adolph Franck placed his steel-rimmed spectacles on his nose áfter having polished them, carefully, on a corner of his spotless cotton handkerchief. With great care, he opened the letter which bore a Germán stamp. He knew, before he opened the letter, what it would contain, and his wife, Louisa, watched him anxiously. He read it slowly, his face expressionless, his hands steady. Never once did Louisa detect the faintest sign of emotion. She watched him intently, reflecting as she did so that her beloved and admired husband was not as other men. His was a character so strong, so firm and so upright, that all other men seemed poor and weak beside him. At last he laid down the letter and sighed deeply. "My father, that good old man Marcus Franck, is dead," he said slowly. "Alav hashalom !" Louisa bowed her fair smooth head. Her blue eyes filled with tears, for she lacked that strength which was the pride of her husband, and she remembered old Marcus Franck with love and tenderness. Adolph picked up the letter and began to read extracts from it in Germán. "He died peacefully and with sanctity," he said, "Hans telis me here. He says : 'The end was as we should have wished it. Peaceful and without pain. Our father slept from this life. He did not die, only he ceased to breathe.' They regret that we could not be present, but liis illnoss only lasted three days. You remember in his last letter, Hans mentioned only that our father was ill." Louisa said : "I felt that when that letter came that it^ was to say that he had left us." Adolph nodded. "These things are sometimes revealed to us," he said in a slightly Jovian tone, then rather more briskly he added, "and now we shall return to Dresden." "To Dresden !" Even the regret which she felt for the loss of her father-in-law could not entirely subdue the excitement in Louisa's voice. To return to Dresden meant, to her, to return home. They had come to England two years ago because Adolph was ambitious, and because he believed that England was the goal of every man who hoped