Peter Steinmarc, when he went into Madame Staubach\'s parlour, found that lady on her knees in prayer. He had entered the room without notice, having been urged to this unwonted impetuosity by the severity of the provocation which he had received. Madame Staubach raised her head; but when she saw him she did not rise. He stood there for some seconds looking at her, expecting her to get up and greet him; but when he found that such was not her purpose, he turned angrily on his heel, and went out of the house, up to his office in the town-hall. His services were not of much service to the city on that day,—neither on that day nor on the two following days. He was using all his mental faculties in endeavouring to decide what it might be best for him to do in the present emergency. The red house was a chattel of great value in Nuremberg,—a thing very desirable,—the possession of which Peter himself did desire with all his heart. But then, even in regard to the house, it was not to be arranged that Peter was to become the sole and immediate possessor of it on his marriage. Madame Staubach was to live there, and during her life the prize would be but a half-and-half possession. Madame Staubach was younger than himself; and though he had once thought of marrying her, he was not sure that he was now desirous of living in the same house with her for the remainder of his life. He had wished to marry Linda Tressel, because she was young, and was acknowledged to be a pretty girl; and he still wished to marry her, if not now for these reasons, still for others which were quite as potent. He wanted to be her master, to get the better of her, to punish her for her disdain of him, and to bring her to his feet. But he was not a man so carried away by anger or by a spirit of revenge as to be altogether indifferent to his own future happiness. There had already been some among his fellow-citizens, or perhaps citizenesses, kind enough to compliment him on his good-nature. He had been asked whether Linda Tressel had told him all about her little trip to Augsburg, and whether he intended to ask his cousin Ludovic Valcarm to come to his wedding. And now Linda herself had said things to him which made him doubt whether she was fit to be the wife of a man so respectable and so respected as himself. And were she to do those things which she threatened, where would he be then? All the town would laugh at him, and he would be reduced to live for the remainder of his days in the sole company of Madame Staubach as the result of his enterprise. He was sufficiently desirous of being revenged on Linda, but he was a cautious man, and began to think that he might buy even that pleasure too dear. He had been egged on to the marriage by Herr Molk and one or two others of the city pundits,—by the very men whose opposition he had feared when the idea of marrying Linda was first suggested to him. They had told him that Linda was all right, that the elopement had been in point of fact nothing. "Young girls will be young before they are settled," Herr Molk had said. Then the extreme desirability of the red house had been mentioned, and so Peter had been persuaded. But now, as the day drew near, and as Linda\'s words sounded in his ears, he hardly knew what to think of it. On the evening of the third day of his contemplation, he went again to his friend Herr Molk.

"Nonsense, Peter," said the magistrate; "you must go on now, and there is no reason why you should not. Is a man of your standing to be turned aside by a few idle words from a young girl?"

"But she told me— You can\'t understand what she told me. She\'s been away with this young fellow once, and she said as much as that she\'d go again."

"Pshaw! you haven\'t had to do with women as I have, or you would understand them better. Of course a young girl likes to have her little romance. But when a girl has been well brought up,—and there is no better bringing up than what Linda Tressel has had,—marriage steadies them directly. Think of the position you\'ll have in the city when the house belongs to yourself."

Peter, when he left the magistrate, was still tossed about by an infinity of doubts. If he should once take the girl as his wife, he could never unmarry himself again. He could not do so at least without trouble, disgrace, and ruinous expense. As for revenge, he thought that he might still have a certain amount of that pleasure in repudiating his promised spouse for her bad conduct, and in declaring to her aunt that he could not bring himself to make a wife of a woman who had first disgraced herself, and then absolutely taken glory in her disgrace. As he went along from Herr Molk\'s house towards the island, taking a somewhat long path by the Rothe Ross where he refreshed himself, and down the Carls Strasse, and by the Church of St. Lawrence, round which he walked twice, looking up to the tower for inspiration,—he told himself that circumstances had been most cruel to him. He complained bitterly of his misfortune. If he refused to marry Linda he must leave the red house altogether, and would, of course, be ridiculed for his attempt at matrimony; and if he did marry her— Then, as far as he could see, there would be the very mischief. He pitied himself with an exceedingly strong compassion, because of the unmerited hardness of his position. It was very dark when he got to the narrow passage leading to the house along the river, and when there, in the narrowest and darkest part of the passage, whom should he meet coming from Madame Staubach\'s house,—coming from Linda\'s house, for the passage led from the red house only,—but Ludovic Valcarm his cousin?

"What, uncle Peter?" said Ludovic, assuming a name which he had sometimes used in old days when he had wished to be impertinent to his relative. Peter Steinmarc was too much taken aback to have any speech ready on the occasion. "You don\'t say a word to congratulate me on having escaped from the hands of the Philistines."

"What are you doing here?" said Peter.

"I\'ve been to see my young woman," said Ludovic, who, as Peter imagined, was somewhat elated by strong drink.

"She is not your young woman," said Peter.

"She is not yours at any rate," said the other.

"She is mine if I like to take her," said Peter.

"We shall see about that. But here I am again, at any rate. The mischief take them for interfering old fools! When they had got me they had nothing to say against me."

"Pass on, and let me go by," said Peter.

"One word first, uncle Peter. Among you, you are treating that girl as cruelly as ever a girl was treated. You had better be warned by me, and leave off. If she were forced into a marriage with you, you would only disgrace yourself. I don\'t suppose you want to see her dead at your feet. Go on now, and think of what I have said to you." So Ludovic had been with her again! No; he, Peter Steinmarc, would not wed with one who was so abandoned. He would reject her;—would reject her that very night. But he would do so in a manner that should leave her very little cause for joy or triumph.

We must now go back for a while to Linda and her aunt. No detailed account of that meeting between Linda and Steinmarc, in Steinmarc\'s room, ever reached Madame Staubach\'s ears. That there had been an interview, and that Linda had asked Steinmarc to absolve her from her troth, the aunt did learn from the niece; and most angry she was when she learned it. She again pointed out to the sinner the terrible sin of which she was guilty in not submitting herself entirely, in not eradicating and casting out from her bosom all her human feelings, in not crushing herself, as it were, upon a wheel, in token of her repentance for what she had done. Sackcloth and ashes, in their material shape, were odious to the imagination of Madame Staubach, because they had a savour of Papacy, and implied that the poor sinner who bore them could do something towards his own salvation by his own works; but that moral sackcloth, and those ashes of the heart and mind, which she was ever prescribing to Linda, seemed to her to have none of this taint. And yet, in what is the difference? The school of religion to which Madame Staubach belonged was very like that early school of the Church of Rome in which material ashes were first used for the personal annoyance of the sinner. But the Church of Rome in Madame Staubach\'s day had, by the force of the human nature of its adherents, made its way back to the natural sympathies of mankind; whereas in Madame Staubach\'s school the austerity of self-punishment was still believed to be all in all. During the days of Steinmarc\'s meditation, Linda was prayed for and was preached to with an unflagging diligence which, at the end of that time, had almost brought the girl to madness. For Linda the worst circumstance of all was this, that she had never as yet brought herself to disbelieve her aunt\'s religious menaces. She had been so educated that what fixed belief she had on the subject at all was in accordance with her aunt\'s creed rather than against it. When she was alone, she would tell herself that it was her lot to undergo that eternal condemnation with which her aunt threatened her; though in telling herself so she would declare to herself also that whatever that punishment could be, her Creator, let Him be ever so relentless, could inflict nothing on her worse than that state of agony with which His creatures had tormented her in this world.

She was in this state when Tetchen crept up to her room, on that evening on which Peter had been with Herr Molk. "Fraulein," said Tetchen, "you are very unkind to me."

"Never mind," said Linda, not looking up into the woman\'s face.

"I have done everything in my power for you, as though you had been my own."

"I am not your own. I don\'t want you to do anything for me."

"I love you dearly, and I love him,—Ludovic. Have I not done everything in my power to save you from the man you hate?"

"You made me go off with him in the night, like a—like a—! Oh, Tetchen, was that treating me as though I had been your own? Would you have done that for your own child?"

"Why not,—if you are to be his wife?"

"Tetchen, you have made me hate you, and you have made me hate myself. If I had not done that, I should not be such a coward. Go away. I do not want to speak to you."

Then the old woman came close up to Linda, and stood for a moment leaning over her. Linda took no notice of her, but continued by a certain tremulous shaking of her knee to show how strongly she was moved. "My darling," said Tetchen, "why should you send away from you those who love you?"

"Nobody loves me," said Linda.

"I love you,—and Ludovic loves you."

"That is of no use,—of none at all. I do not wish to hear his name again. It was not his fault, but he has disgraced me. It was my own fault,—and yours."

"Linda, he is in the house now."

"Who—Ludovic?"

"Yes; Ludovic Valcarm."

"In the house? How did he escape?"

"They could do nothing to him. They let him go. They were obliged to let him go."

Then Linda got up from her seat, and stood for a minute with her eyes fixed upon the old woman\'s face, thinking what step she had better take. In the confusion of her mind, and in the state to which she had been reduced, there was no idea left with her that it might yet be possible that she would become the wife of Ludovic Valcarm, and live as such the life of a respectable woman. She had taught herself to acknowledge that her elopement with him had made that quite impossible;—that by what they had done they had both............