"Half a hundred-weight grass-seed, mixed," with the address of a manufactory of farming utensils.
She turned it over, looked at it carelessly, then suddenly every trace of color left her face. She raised her eyes with a scared expression in them, then looked down again--yes, there it was!
"----Besides the above-mentioned property Miss Gertrude Baumhagen owns a villa near Bergedorf. A massive building, splendidly furnished, with stables, gardener's house and a garden-lot of ten acres, partly wood, enclosed by a massive wall.
"The property is recorded in the name of the young lady, being valued at twenty-four thousand dollars.
"For any further details I am quite at your service,
Gertrude tried to read it again, but her hand trembled so violently that the letters danced before her eyes. She had seen it, however, distinctly enough; it would not change read it as often as she might. With pitiless certainty the conviction forced itself upon her: it is the truth, the horrible truth! and every word of his had been a lie.
She had been bought and sold like a piece of merchandise--she, _she_ had been caught in such a snare!
She had taken _that_ for love which had been only the commonest mercenary speculation.
Ah, the humiliation was nothing to the dreadful feeling that stole over her and chilled her to the heart--the pain of wounded pride and with it the old bitter perversity. She had not felt it lately, she had been good, happiness makes one so good--and now? and now?
The carriage rolled quickly down the hill to Niendorf and stopped before the house. Half-unconsciously the young wife descended and stood in the rain on the steps of the veranda. It seemed to her as if she were here for the first time; the small windows, the gray old walls with the pointed roof--how ugly they were, how strange! All the flowers in the garden beaten down by the rain--the charm that love gives fled, only bare, sober, sad reality! and on the threshold crouched the demon of selfishness, of cold calculation.
She passed through the garden hall and up the stairs to her room. In the corridor Johanna met her.
"The master went away in the carriage directly after breakfast," she announced. "He laid a note on your work-table, ma'am."