their
soft voices. It seemed to her that she could have died happily, so
happily, then, if only they might have been allowed to stand round
her bed, and still to whisper and still to touch her. But they had
been told that they might only just see their new cousin and then
depart,--because the new cousin was ill. The servant at the front
door had doubted her, as it is the duty of servants to doubt in such
cases; but her uncle had not doubted, and her uncle's wife, when she
heard the story, wept over her, and told her that she should be at
rest.

Linda told her story from the first to the last. She told
everything,--her hatred for the one man, her love for the other; her
journey to Augsburg. "Ah, dear, dear, dear," said aunt Gruener when
this was told to her. "I know how wicked I have been," said Linda,
sorrowing. "I do not say that you have been wicked, my dear, but you
have been unfortunate," said aunt Gruener. And then Linda went on to
tell her, as the day so much dreaded by her drew nearer and nearer,
as she came to be aware that, let her make what effort she would, she
could not bring herself to be the man's wife,--that the horror of it
was too powerful for her,--she resolved at the last moment that she
would seek the only other relative in the world of whom she knew even
the name. Her aunt Gruener thoroughly commended her for this, saying,
however, that it would have been much better that she should have
made the journey at some period earlier in her troubles. "Aunt
Charlotte does not seem to be a very nice sort of woman to live
with," said aunt Gruener. Then Linda, with what strength she could,
took Madame Staubach's part. "She always thought that she was doing
right," said Linda, solemnly. "Ah, that comes of her religion," said
aunt Gruener. "We think differently, my dear. Thank God, we have got
somebody to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do."
Linda was not strong enough to argue the question, or to remind her
aunt that this somebody, too, might possibly be wrong.

Linda Tressel was now happier than she had remembered herself to
have been since she was a child, though ill, so that the doctor who
came to visit her could only shake his head and speak in whispers
to aunt Gruener. Linda herself, perceiving how it was with the
doctor,--knowing that there were whispers though she did not hear
them, and shakings of the head though she did not see them,--told her
aunt with a smile that she was cont