duty to be completed?

Between her own feelings on one side, and Tetchen's continued
instigation on the other, she became aware that that which she truly
needed was advice. These secret interviews and this clandestine
correspondence were terrible to her very soul. She would not even yet
be a castaway if it might be possible to save herself! There were two
things fixed for her,--fixed, even though by their certainty she must
become a castaway. She would never marry Peter Steinmarc, and she
would never cease to love Ludovic Valcarm. But might it be possible
that these assured facts should be reconciled to duty? If only there
were somebody whom she might trust to tell her that!

Linda's father had had many friends in Nuremberg, and she could still
remember those whom, as a child, she had seen from time to time in
her father's house. The names of some were still familiar to her, and
the memories of the faces even of one or two who had suffered her
to play at their knees when she was little more than a baby, were
present to her. Manners had so changed at the red house since those
days, that few, if any, of these alliances had been preserved. The
peculiar creed of Madame Staubach was not popular with the burghers
of Nuremberg, and we all know how family friendships will die out
when they are not kept alive by the warmth of familiar intercourse.
There were still a few, and they among those most respected in the
city, who would bow to Madame Staubach when they met her in the
streets, and would smile and nod at Linda as they remembered the old
days when they would be merry with a decorous mirth in the presence
of her father. But there were none in the town,--no, not one,--who
could interfere as a friend in the affairs of the widow Staubach's
household, or who ever thought of asking Linda to sit at a friendly
hearth. Close neighbourhood and school acquaintance had made Fanny
Heisse her friend, but it was very rarely indeed that she had set her
foot over the threshold of Jacob's door. Peter Steinmarc was their
only friend, and his friendship had arisen from the mere fact of his
residence beneath the same roof. It was necessary that their house
should be divided with another, and in this way Peter had become
their lodger. Linda certainly could not go to Peter for advice. She
would have gone to Jacob Heisse, but that Jacob was a man slow of
speech, somewhat timid in all matters beyond the making of furniture,
and but little inclin