“It was when I was only fourteen,” she said, “that Robert Schumann first became a visitor at our house. He was then just eighteen years of age, and very soon we two young people had fallen in love, and even become secretly engaged. Secretly, I need hardly say, so frightened was I of my father, who, for his part, had constantly announced that he had his own quite fixed plans for my future.” Again she paused, and seemed for a moment plunged in memories of the past. I did not disturb her with questions, but waited for her to go on with her narrative, and it was with merriment once more rippling over her face that she related some of the more amusing scenes in the drama. “Four years later it had come to open war between my affianced husband and my father, and I remember having to appear between them in the court of law, in which the struggle for my person was being decided. Schumann proved to the entire satisfaction of the court that he was of age, and perfectly well able to support a wife, whilst my father, having no just ground for his refusal, simply loaded him with insult. The decision was accordingly given in our favour, and we were legally authorised to become man and wife. At this my father’s rage literally knew no bounds. Had he not often sworn that his daughter should never marry a beggarly musician, that he would hardly consider a prince good enough for her! So he turned me out of the house, refusing even to let me take my own few possessions with me, my stepmother going so far as to tear off my finger a little ring I always wore, as it had been my mother’s, but which she now gave to her own daughter. Thus was I cast out of my father’s house, and from the moment the door closed behind me I never saw his face again, nor ever heard a word more from him. It was as if I were really dead to him henceforth. But I did not grieve. It was by my husband’s side that I wandered forth, happy for the first time in my life, in the consciousness of our mutual affection.