But in these shiftings Balatka became a ruined man, and at the time of which I write he and his daughter were almost penniless.

The reader must know that Karil Zamenoy and Josef Balatka had married sisters.

Josef's wife, Nina's mother, had long been dead, having died--so said Sophie Zamenoy, her sister--of a broken heart; of a heart that had broken itself in grief, because her husband had joined his fortunes with those of a Jew.
Whether the disgrace of the alliance or its disastrous result may have broken the lady's heart, or whether she may have died of a pleurisy, as the doctors said, we need not inquire here.

Her soul had been long at rest, and her spirit, we may hope, had ceased to fret itself in horror at contact with a Jew.

But Sophie Zamenoy was alive and strong, and could still hate a Jew as intensely as Jews ever were hated in those earlier days in which hatred could satisfy itself with persecution.