"Do you mean that she eloped with him from her aunt's house in the middle of the night?" asked Max, as soon as he was alone with his wife. "Of course she did," said Fanny; "and so would I, had I been treated as she has been. It has all been the fault of that wicked old saint, her aunt." Then they put their heads together as to the steps that must be taken. Fanny proposed that a letter should be at once sent to Madame Staubach, explaining plainly that Linda had run away from her marriage with Steinmarc, and stating that for the present she was safe and comfortable with her old friend. It could hardly be said that Linda assented to this, because she accepted all that was done for her as a child might accept it. But she knelt upon the floor with her head upon her friend's lap, kissing Fanny's hands, and striving to murmur thanks. Oh, if they would leave her there for three days, so that she might recover something of her strength! "They shall leave you for three weeks, Linda," said the other. "Madame Staubach is not the Emperor, that she is to have her own way in everything. And as for Peter--" "Pray, don't talk of him;--pray, do not," said Linda, shuddering. But all this comfort was at an end about seven o'clock on that evening. The second train in the day from Nuremberg was due at Augsburg at six, and Max Bogen, though he said nothing on the subject to Linda, had thought it probable that some messenger from the former town might arrive in quest of Linda by that train. At seven there came another little carriage up to the door, and before her name could be announced, Madame Staubach was standing in Fanny Bogen's parlour. "Oh, my child!" she said. "Oh, my child, may God in His mercy forgive my child!" Linda cowered in a corner of the sofa and did not speak. "She hasn't done anything in the least wrong," said Fanny; "nothing on earth. You were going to make her marry a man she hated, and so she came away. If father had done the same to me, I wouldn't have stayed an hour." Linda still cowered on the sofa, and was still speechless.