I am going to be married to--Anton Trendellsohn." She said the words slowly, standing bolt-upright, at her greatest height, as she spoke them, and looking her aunt full in the face with something of defiance both in her eyes and in the tone of her voice.

She had almost said, "Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew;" and when her speech was finished, and admitted of no addition, she reproached herself with pusillanimity in that she had omitted the word which had always been so odious, and would now be doubly odious--odious to her aunt in a tenfold degree.
Madame Zamenoy stood for a while speechless--struck with horror.
The tidings which she heard were so unexpected, so strange, and so abominable, that they seemed at first to crush her.

Nina was her niece--her sister's child; and though she might be repudiated, reviled, persecuted, and perhaps punished, still she must retain her relationship to her injured relatives.

And it seemed to Madame Zamenoy as though the marriage of which Nina spoke was a thing to be done at once, out of hand--as though the disgusting nuptials were to take place on that day or on the next, and could not now be avoided.

It occurred to her that old Balatka himself was a consenting party, and that utter degradation was to fall upon the family instantly.