No answer came to this despairing question, and no sound from Gertrud's lips; mutely she fought out the conflict, the hardest in her life. How terrible it was, the convulsively wrung hands bore witness, but the lips were silent against the pain. She believed that in the past night she had known the fullest measure of tormenting anxiety, and yet, the despair of that hour compared with this moment! Now, with her own hand she must strike the threatening blow, it would be a deadly one, she knew, and this time more was at stake than life alone. Only few, in face of such a choice, would have possessed the courage for conflict; they would have succumbed to swoons or tears, only listening to the voice of the heart, and turning away from the fateful decision. For her own unhappiness Gertrud was not one of the weak ones. A lonely, sad youth, containing bitter experiences enough for a whole life, had steeled her to endurance, but also given her that hardness, which happy people know nothing of. The iron law of duty, hitherto the single principle of her life, here, too, silenced every other voice, and, silently, and warningly came back the remembrances of the past, still sleeping unforgotten in her inmost soul. Every bitter hour in which her childhood had been so rich, every tear which she had shed, every humiliation she had endured, the mother's dying bed, the picture of her never known, but yet passionately loved father--all, all passed vividly before her, and as these remembrances poured upon her, the girl's features grew hard and cold, till at last, with dark decision she arose. The conflict was at an end; she laid her right hand as if with an oath, upon the fateful paper. "The warning came at the right time! I was on the point of treason to myself and to my whole past. My poor sacrificed parents, the daughter will know how to guard your rights--even though she should perish in the act!" Meanwhile, the other inhabitants of the house sat, as usual, after breakfast, in the garden house. Baron Sternfeld read aloud to his mother from the newspaper, but the political news, which she followed with such attention, seemed to weary the Baronin as well as Frau von Reinert; the former divided her attention between her embroidery and her two little daughters, who were playing outside on the terrace, and the latter yawned again and again behind her handkerchief.