If her lover now led her through the door adorned with the huge, showy escutcheon, she would no longer come as a person unwillingly tolerated, but as a welcome helper-perhaps as the saviour of the imperilled house.

Of the women of the Eysvogel family she forbade herself to think.
How touching the handsome, aristocratic, grey-haired man seemed to her in his helpless weakness! If her father would only receive him, he would find it no easier than she to deny him the compassion he so greatly needed.
She knocked at the lonely mourner's door and was admitted.
He was sitting, with his head bowed on his hands, opposite to the large portrait of her dead mother in her bridal robes.

The dusk of the gathering twilight concealed the picture, but he had doubtless gazed long at the lovely features, and still beheld them with his mental vision.
Els was received with a mournful greeting; but when Herr Ernst heard what had brought her to him, he fiercely commanded her to tell Herr Casper that he would have nothing more to do with him.
Els interceded for the unfortunate man, begging, pleading, and assuring her father that she would never give up Wolff.

The happiness of her whole life was centred in him and his love.

If he refused the Eysvogels the aid besought by the old merchant who, in his humility, seemed a different man---- Here her father indignantly broke in, ordering her to disturb him no longer.