It might compensate for many of the losses of recent years.

Should it be favourable, the heaviest burden would be lifted from his soul; in the opposite case the old house would be shaken to its foundations.

Yet even its fall would have been easier for him to endure than this cruel uncertainty, to which was added the torturing anxiety of bearing the responsibility of things for which he was not to blame, and of which, moreover, he was even denied a clear view.

Yet he felt absolutely certain that his father was concealing many things, perhaps the worst, and often felt as if he were walking in the darkness over a mouldering bridge.

Ah, if it could only be propped up, and then rebuilt! But if it must give way, he hoped the catastrophe would come soon.