It contained only a few lines, apparently very hurriedly put together, but in a business like form. The effect, however, upon the girl was like a lightning flash. She sprang up; her face, a moment since so pale, bathed in a deep flush, her eyes shining in passionate triumph, she pressed the new found paper with both hands against her breast, as if some one would tear it away, and her bosom heaved deeply--deeply, as if the weight of a whole life had been removed from it.
But it was only for a moment, in the next she started at some remembrance, which laid an icy hand on her heart, the fateful paper sank from her trembling hands, she stared at it despairingly, and then raised her eyes with a bitter cry to Heaven. On this paper had once hung the honour and happiness of a whole family--then a mischievous chance had allowed it to disappear.
Twice ten years had passed--two people had perished through its loss, and now chance had given back what was lost.
"O, God, why, just in my hand? And why now, just now?"
No answer came to this despairing question, and no sound from Gertrud's lips; mutely she fought out the conflict, the hardest in her life. How terrible it was, the convulsively wrung hands bore witness, but the lips were silent against the pain. She believed that in the past night she had known the fullest measure of tormenting anxiety, and yet, the despair of that hour compared with this moment! Now, with her own hand she must strike the threatening blow, it would be a deadly one, she knew, and this time more was at stake than life alone.
Only few, in face of such a choice, would have possessed the courage for conflict; they would have succumbed to swoons or tears, only listening to the voice of the heart, and turning away from the fateful decision. For her own unhappiness Gertrud was not one of the weak ones. A lonely, sad youth, containing bitter experiences enough for a whole life, had steeled her to endurance, but also given her that hardness, which happy people know nothing of. The iron law of duty, hitherto the single principle of her life, here, too, silenced every other voice, and, silently, and warningly came back the remembrances of the past, still sleeping unforgotten in her inmost soul. Every bitter hour in which her childhood had been so rich, every tear which she had shed, every humiliation she had endured, the mother's dying bed, the picture of her never known, but yet passionately loved father--all, all passed vividly before her, and as these remembrances poured upon her, the girl's features grew hard and cold, till at last, with dark decision she arose. The conflict was at an end; she laid her right hand as if with an oath, upon the fateful paper.
"The warning came at the right time! I was on the point of treason to myself and to my whole past. My poor sacrificed parents, the daughter will know how to guard your rights--even though she should perish in the act!"
Meanwhile, the other inhabitants of the house sat, as usual, after breakfast, in the garden house. Baron Sternfeld read aloud to his mother from the newspaper, but the political news, which she followed with such attention, seemed to weary the Baronin as well as Frau von Reinert; the former divided her attention between her embroidery and her two little daughters, who were playing outside on the terrace, and the latter yawned again and again behind her handkerchief.
The seven years had left their trace clearly enough upon Antonie. She was no longer that charming, poetical being, who knew so well how to inspire the young artist, that he forgot all else in his passion for her. Her beauty was of that delicate, but passing kind, which only lasts so long as the bloom and freshness of youth remains, and then vanishes, leaving scarcely a trace of its former reign. There were no firm, noble lines, no characteristic expression, no soul, in fact, to make up for these fleeting charms. The former enthusiastic fire in the dark eyes was extinguished, lost in that expression of weariness and languor, as plainly to be read in her features as in her husband's. The Gräfin Arnau, at twenty, had been wonderfully beautiful, Frau von Reinert, now thirty, was already faded, and all the magic arts of her toilette could not make up for what was lost.
Hermann's entrance put an end both to the Baron's reading and the weariness of the ladies. After a short morning greeting, including all, he went up to the Präsidentin's chair, and with a few words, excused his absence at breakfast.