In the mean time she and her father might starve!
They could not live on the price of a necklace for ever. She had not
made up her mind--she never could make up her mind--as to what might be
best for her father when she should be married; but she had made up her
mind that when that happy time should come, she would simply obey her
husband. He would tell her what would be best for her father. But in
the mean time there was no word of her marriage; and now she had been
ten days in the Kleinseite without once having had so much as a message
from her lover. How was it possible that she should continue to live in
such a condition as this?
She was sitting one morning very forlorn in the big parlour, looking
out upon the birds who were pecking among the dust in the courtyard
below, when her eye just caught the drapery of the dress of some woman
who had entered the arched gateway. Nina, from her place by the window,
could see out through the arch, and no one therefore could come through
their gate while she was at her seat without passing under her eye; but
on this occasion the birds had distracted her attention, and she had
not caught a sight of the woman's face or figure.
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