all that already from her uncle.

"And hasn't he been here? Did he not ask your pardon, has he not tried
to get you back?" asked Mrs. Baumhagen, breathlessly.

"No," was the half-choked reply.

"Poor child!"

The mother pressed her cambric handkerchief to her eyes.

"It is brutal, really brutal! Thank God that your eyes have been opened
so soon. But you cannot stay here the whole time before the
separation?"

Gertrude started and looked at her mother with wide eyes. She herself
had thought of nothing but a separation. But when she heard the
dreadful word spoken, it fell on her like a thunderbolt.

"Yes," she said at length, wringing her hands nervously, "where should
I stay?"

"And for pity's sake, what do you do here from morning till night?"

"I read and go to walk, and--" I grieve, she would have added, but she
was silent. What did her mother know of grief!

"My poor child!"

Mrs. Baumhagen was really crying now. This atmosphere weighed on her
nerves. There was something oppressive in the air, and they really had
a dreadful time before them. What if he should not consent to a
separation? Why had God given the child such an unbending will which
had brought her into this misery! If she had only followed her mother's
advice. Mrs. Baumhagen had taken an aversion to the man from the first
moment.

"I think I must go home, my headache--" she stammered, unscrewing her
bottle of smelling salts.

"If you want anything, Gertrude, write or send to me. Do you want a
piano or books? I have Daudet's latest novel. Ah, child, there are many
trials in life and especially in married life. You haven't experienced
the worst of it yet."

"Thank you, mamma."

The young wife followed the mother down the corridor and down the
stairs to the hall door. Mrs. Baumhagen said good-bye with a cheerful
smile--the coachman need not know everything.

"I hope you will soon be better, Gertrude," she said, loudly. "Be
persevering in your water-cure."

Gertrude, left alone, went on into the garden. At the end of the wall
where the path curved was a little summer-house, with a roof of bark
shaped like a mushroom. Here she stopped and looked out into the
country which lay before her in all the glow and fragrance of the
evening light. Behind the wooded hills of the Thurmberg stood the dear,
cosy little house. She walked in spirit through all its rooms, but she
forced her thoughts past one door, the room with the old mahogany
furnitu