"So much time elapsed between my letter and your answer, that there can have been no inconsiderate haste on your part. You have reflected upon all that required reflection, and therefore there is scarcely any need of my express declaration that with the breaking of your troth to Otto every tie between yourself and myself and every member of my family, is severed forever. How you justify yourself in casting a doubt upon Otto's affection for you I cannot tell; at all events, you cannot doubt his honour. _A Dönninghausen keeps his word._ And Otto still feels himself bound, as he has repeatedly told me. I thought you, too, a genuine child of my house; but you are only the child of your mother, the first, the only Dönninghausen who ever deviated from the paths of duty and honour. Otto will write to you. If he succeeds in convincing and persuading you, you shall still find me inclined to forgive; but decide quickly, or this is the last word you will receive from your grandfather, "JOHANN FREIHERR VON DÖNNINGHAUSEN." This was too much! Johanna folded the letter again with trembling hands. Her mother, the patient sufferer, and she herself, who surely had never 'sought her own,' were disgraced and exiled, while Otto was looked upon as the genuine Dönninghausen who keeps his word, and Magelone as one of the blameless ones who have never strayed from the true path. Anger and pride for a moment thrust pain into the background. She would be final also, as her grandfather had been,--would prove to herself thus that she was of his blood. She went to the open window and looked out. On the other side of the wall that bounded the little street lay a garden with fruit-trees and beds of vegetables. It was late in the afternoon, and raining. From the low clouds came the 'sound of vernal showers' filling the air and rustling low among the tree-tops; a mingled fragrance of herbs, flowers, and wet earth ascended to the window, and under the influence of the murmuring sound and the scent-laden air her tormenting reflections faded into dreamy revery. From the misty veil of the rain came trooping, at first vaguely, but in ever-increasing distinctness, forms and pictures,--the past and the present, the real and the unreal, blending together. When the light was brought, Johanna awoke as from a deep sleep. And as she awoke she found herself back again in the midst of the old life. Each throb of her heart brought with it a dull pain, a constant grief. She saw with pitiless distinctness what she had lost. Anxiety for Lisbeth oppressed her. And yet everything was changed! The spell that had fettered her since that unhappy morning in the forest was broken, and she looked beyond herself out into the eternal beauty of life, which is independent of all individual happiness or misery.