The young girl thanked her pleasantly and followed her. She returned in a very short time, nothing tasted good when she was so alone. She lighted the lamp and took a book and read. It had grown still gradually outside in the street, quarter after quarter struck from St. Benedict's tower, until it was eleven o'clock. A carriage drove up--her mother was coming home.
Gertrude closed her book, it was bedtime. The hall-door closed, steps went past Gertrude's door--but no, some one was coming in.
Mrs. Baumhagen still wore her black Spanish lace mantilla over her head. She only wished to ask her daughter what all this was about the christening this afternoon. The pastor's wife had told her a story of a curious kind of godfather; the pastor had come home full of it.
"Jenny did not come," explained the young girl, "and a strange gentleman offered to stand."
"But how horribly pushing," cried the excited little woman. "You should have drawn back, child--who knows what sort of a person he may be."
"I don't know him, mamma. But whoever he may be, he was so very good; he never supposed, I am sure, that his kindness could be misunderstood."
"There," cried Mrs. Baumhagen, "you see it is always so with you--you are so easily imposed upon by that sort of thing, Gertrude,--really I get very anxious about you. Did you know that Baron von Lowenberg--I remember the name now--is a distant connection of the ducal house of A.? Mrs. von S---- knows the whole family, they are charming people. But I will not influence you, I am only telling you this by the way. Sophie tells me an invitation has come from the Stadträthin for to-morrow. One never has a day to one's self. You will come too? It is about the Society festival; you young girls will have something to do.
"Jenny had a light still," she continued, without noticing her daughter's silence. "Arthur brought home Carl Röben, who came for his young wife, and Lina was just coming up out of the cellar with champagne.--I beg you will not tell any one about that scene in the church to-day; I have asked the pastor's wife to be silent too.
"Good night, my child. Of course the tea wasn't fit to drink at Mrs. S---- as usual."
"Good-night, mamma," replied Gertrude. She took the lamp and looked at her father's picture once more, then she went to bed. She awoke suddenly out of a half-slumber; she had heard the voice so distinctly that she had heard in the church to-day for the first time. She sat up with her heart beating quickly. No, what she had experienced today had been no dream. Like a ray of sunshine fell that friendly act of the unknown into this world of egotism and heartlessness. And then she staid long awake.