rather angrily.

She bent back her head proudly.

"No!" came from her lips, "not if I were still more miserable than I
am! I can forgive him, but--fawn upon him like--like a hound--no!"

"God forgive me, but it is nothing but the purest arrogance that
animates you," cried the old man. "Who gave you the right to set
yourself so high above him? He was a poor man who could not marry
without money--is it a crime that he should have asked a question as to
this matter? It happens to every princess. You are stern and unloving
and unjust. Have you never done anything wrong?"

She had started at his first reproachful words like a frightened child,
now she sprang up and as she knelt down before him her eyes looked up
at him imploringly.

"Uncle, do you know how I loved him? Do you know how a woman can love?
I looked up to him as to the noblest being on earth, so lofty, so great
he seemed to me. I have lain at his feet, and at night I folded my
hands and thanked God that he had given me this man for my husband. I
thought he was the only one who did not look on me only as a rich girl,
and he has told me so a hundred times. Uncle, you have been always
alone, you don't know how people can love! And then to come down and
see in him only a common man, a man who does not disdain to tell a
lie--O, I would rather have died!" And she hid her face in her
trembling hands. "And there, where I have been so happy, shall I
satisfy myself with the coldest duty? I must be his wife and know that
it was not love that brought me to his side? I shall hear his tender
words and not think, 'He does not mean them?' He will say something to
me and I shall torment myself with doubts whether he really means it?
Oh, hell itself could not be more dreadful, for I loved him!"

Tears stood in the old man's eyes. He stroked Gertrude's smooth hair in
some embarrassment.

"Stand up, Gertrude," he said, gently; and after a pause he added, "The
Bible says we shall forgive."

"Yes, with all my heart," she murmured. "And if you see him tell him
so. Ah, if he had come and had said--'Forgive me'--but so--"

An idea came into Uncle Henry's head.

"Then would you give in, child?" he inquired.

"Yes," she stammered, "hard as it would be."

The old egotist knew then what he had to do. He led the weeping
Gertrude to her little sofa, asked Johanna for a glass of wine and then
drove to Niendorf. As he went he could see always before him the
beautiful tear-stained