"Bring me a little hot milk," she said, shivering, "as soon as you can, Mrs. Rode."
"This very minute!" And the old woman hurried away. Gertrude could hear the clatter of her slippers on the stairs and the shutting of the hall door. At last she was alone.
A cool green twilight reigned in the room from the branches of the beeches which pressed close up to the pane. It was not so dark here that last summer she had spent in "Waldruhe." Otherwise--the woman was right--everything was as it had been then, the mirror in its pear-wood frame still displayed the Centaurs drawing their bows in the yellow and black ground of the upper part; above the small old-fashioned writing-table still hung the engraving, "Paul and Virginia" under the palm trees; the green curtains of the great canopied bed were not in the least faded, the sofa was as uncomfortable as ever, and the table stood before it with the same plush cover. She had passed so many pleasant hours here, in the sweet spring evenings at the open window, and on stormy autumn evenings when the clouds were flying in the sky, the storm came down from the mountains and beat against the lonely house. The rain pattered against the panes, and the woods began to rustle with a melancholy sound. Then the curtains were drawn, the fire burned brightly in the fireplace, and opposite in the cosy sitting-room her father sat at a game of cards. She was the hostess here in "Waldruhe," and she felt so proud of going into the kitchen with her white apron on and of going down into the cellar, and then at dinner all the old gentlemen complimented her on the success of her venison pie. The dear old friends--there was only Uncle Henry left now.
There on that bed they had laid the fainting girl when they had found her by her father's death-bed.
The young wife shivered suddenly. "He died of his unhappy marriage," she had once heard Uncle Henry say--in a low tone, but she had understood him nevertheless.
Mamma did not love him, she had loved another man, and she had told him so once, when they were quarreling about some trifle.
"I should have been happier with the other one--I liked him at any rate, but--he was poor."
Gertrude understood it all now; she had her father's character, she was proud, too. Oh, those gloomy years when she was growing to understand what sunshine was wanting in the house!
"If it were not for the children," he had said once, angrily, "I would have put an end to it long ago."
O what a torture it is when two people are bound together by the law of God and man who would yet gladly put a whole world between them! Unworthy? Immoral?