"No," was the half-choked reply.
"Poor child!"
The mother pressed her cambric handkerchief to her eyes.
"It is brutal, really brutal! Thank God that your eyes have been opened so soon. But you cannot stay here the whole time before the separation?"
Gertrude started and looked at her mother with wide eyes. She herself had thought of nothing but a separation. But when she heard the dreadful word spoken, it fell on her like a thunderbolt.
"Yes," she said at length, wringing her hands nervously, "where should I stay?"
"And for pity's sake, what do you do here from morning till night?"
"I read and go to walk, and--" I grieve, she would have added, but she was silent. What did her mother know of grief!
"My poor child!"
Mrs. Baumhagen was really crying now. This atmosphere weighed on her nerves. There was something oppressive in the air, and they really had a dreadful time before them. What if he should not consent to a separation? Why had God given the child such an unbending will which had brought her into this misery! If she had only followed her mother's advice. Mrs. Baumhagen had taken an aversion to the man from the first moment.