eason? He came to me once
up-stairs at night when you were sitting here with that--beast, and I
swore to him then that I would never love another man,--that I should
never marry anybody else!"

"Came to you once up-stairs at night! To your own chamber?"

"Yes, he did. You may know all about it, if you please. You may know
everything. I don't want anything to be secret. He came to me, and
when he had his arms round me I told him that I was his own,--his
own,--his own. How can I be the wife of another man after that?"

Madame Staubach was so truly horrified by what she had first heard,
was so astonished, that she omitted even to groan. Valcarm had been
with this wretched girl up in her own chamber! She hardly even now
believed that which it seemed to her that she was called upon to
believe, having never as yet for a moment doubted the real purity
of her niece even when she was most vehemently denouncing her as a
reprobate, a castaway, and a child of Satan. The reader will know to
what extent Linda had been imprudent, to what extent she had sinned.
But Madame Staubach did not know. She had nothing to guide her but
the words of this poor girl who had been so driven to desperation by
the misery which enveloped her, that she almost wished to be taken
for worse than she was in order that she might escape the terrible
doom from which she saw no other means of escape. Nobody, it is true,
could have forced her to marry Peter Steinmarc. There was no law, no
custom in Nuremberg, which would have assisted her aunt, or Peter, or
even the much-esteemed and venerable Herr Molk himself, in compelling
her to submit to such nuptials. She was free to exercise her own
choice, if only she had had strength to assert her freedom. But
youth, which rebels so often against the authority and wisdom of age,
is also subject to much tyranny from age. Linda did not know the
strength of her own position, had not learned to recognise the fact
of her own individuality. She feared the power of her aunt over her,
and through her aunt the power of the man whom she hated; and she
feared the now provoked authority of Herr Molk, who had been with
her weak as a child is weak, counselling her to submit herself to
a suitor unfitted for her, because another man who loved her was
also unfit. And, moreover, Linda, though she was now willing in her
desperation to cast aside all religious scruples of her own, still
feared those with which her aunt was armed. Unless