Gertrude nodded slightly, she knew all that already from her uncle.
"And hasn't he been here? Did he not ask your pardon, has he not tried to get you back?" asked Mrs. Baumhagen, breathlessly.
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!
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.
"I think I must go home, my headache--" she stammered, unscrewing her bottle of smelling salts.
"If you want anything, Gertrude, write or send to me. Do you want a piano or books? I have Daudet's latest novel. Ah, child, there are many trials in life and especially in married life. You haven't experienced the worst of it yet."
The young wife followed the mother down the corridor and down the stairs to the hall door. Mrs. Baumhagen said good-bye with a cheerful smile--the coachman need not know everything.
"I hope you will soon be better, Gertrude," she said, loudly. "Be persevering in your water-cure."
Gertrude, left alone, went on into the garden. At the end of the wall where the path curved was a little summer-house, with a roof of bark shaped like a mushroom. Here she stopped and looked out into the country which lay before her in all the glow and fragrance of the evening light. Behind the wooded hills of the Thurmberg stood the dear, cosy little house. She walked in spirit through all its rooms, but she forced her thoughts past one door, the room with the old mahogany furniture into which she had gone first on her wedding eve. And she leaned more firmly against the wall and gazed out at the setting sun which stood in the sky like a fiery red ball, till the tears streamed from her eyes, and her heart ached with mortification and humiliation. Why did that day always come back to her so, and that evening, the first in that room? The evening when she had slipped from his arms, down to his very feet, hiding her face in his hands, overwhelmed with her deep gratitude. Must he not have smiled to himself at the foolish, passionate, blindly credulous woman? And angry tears fell from her eyes down over her pale cheeks, her hands trembled, and her pride grew stronger every minute.