A debtor under such an obligation could not feel free.

They wanted to pay him back as soon as possible, in just the same coin, florin for florin, three thousand down in one lump, lest any one should say he did not get back exactly what he had given.
Yes, but how were they to find out his name?
Fanny herself did not know it, and she would not have pointed him out in the street if she had had to die for it.

Boltay took the trouble to frequent the coffee-houses and the meetings of the merchants, and listened with all his ears in case he might hear any talk of a shop-girl who had accepted earnest money from a rich gentleman as the price of her virtue.

But there was no such talk anywhere.

This was reassuring in one way, as tending to show that nobody knew anything about it, and therefore the trouble was not so great as it might have been; but the name, the name?
At last Abellino himself came to help them in their search.
Alexander used to go every Sunday to the church which Dame Kramm frequented, and, leaning against a column, would watch to see with whom the spinster conversed.
On the third Sunday Abellino appeared upon the scene also.
The worthy spinster told him the marvellous story of how Fanny and her aunt had unexpectedly disappeared one night without telling her whither they had gone, which was not very nice of them; but she suspected that they had flitted to Mr.Boltay's house, and Teresa had kept it quiet, no doubt, because there had been certain relations between her and Boltay in their younger days, or perhaps she went to see him because Boltay's adopted son wanted to marry Fanny.