o take Peter for her husband enough to
keep her on her sickbed till she should be beyond all such perils as
that?

Madame Staubach, before she left the room, asked Linda whether she
would not be able to dress herself and come down, so that she might
say one word to her affianced husband. It should be but one word, and
then she should be allowed to return. Linda would have declined to do
this,--was refusing utterly to do it,--when she found that if she did
not go down Peter would be brought up to her bedroom, to receive her
troth there, by her bedside. The former evil, she thought, would be
less than the latter. Steinmarc as a lover at her bedside would be
intolerable to her; and then if she descended, she might ascend again
instantly. That was part of the bargain. But if Peter were to come up
to her room, there was no knowing how long he might stay there. She
promised therefore that she would dress and come down as soon as she
knew that the man was in the parlour. We may say for her, that when
left alone she was as firmly resolved as ever that she would never
become the man's wife. If this illness did not kill her, she would
escape from the wedding in some other way. She would never put her
hand into that of Peter Steinmarc, and let the priest call him and
her man and wife. She had lied to her aunt--so she told herself,--but
her aunt had forced the lie from her.

When Peter entered Madame Staubach's parlour he was again dressed in
his Sunday best, as he had been when he made his first overture to
Linda. "Good evening, Madame Staubach," he said.

"Good evening, Peter Steinmarc."

"I hope you have good news for me, Madame Staubach, from the maiden
up-stairs."

Madame Staubach took a moment or two for thought before she replied.
"Peter Steinmarc, the Lord has been good to us, and has softened her
heart, and has brought the child round to our way of thinking. She
has consented, Peter, that you should be her husband."

Peter was not so grateful perhaps as he should have been at this good
news,--or rather perhaps at the manner in which the result seemed
to have been achieved. Of course he knew nothing of those terribly
earnest petitions which Madame Staubach had preferred to the throne
of heaven on behalf of his marriage, but he did not like being told
at all of any interposition from above in such a matter. He would
have preferred to be assured, even though he himself might not quite
have believed the assurance, that