"Will you listen to me? You are much mistaken if you think that it is because of your trumpery house that this honest man wishes to make you his wife." We must suppose that Madame Staubach suffered some qualm of conscience as she proffered this assurance, and that she repented afterwards of the sin she committed in making a statement which she could hardly herself have believed to be exactly true. "He knew your father before you were born, and your mother; and he has known me for many years. Has he not lived with us ever since you can remember?" "Yes," said Linda; "I remember him ever since I was a very little girl,--as long as I can remember anything,--and he seemed to be as old then as he is now." "And why should he not be old? Why should you want a husband to be young and foolish and headstrong as you are yourself;--perhaps some one who would drink and gamble and go about after strange women?" "I don't want any man for a husband," said Linda. "There can be nothing more proper than that Herr Steinmarc should make you his wife. He has spoken to me and he is willing to undertake the charge." "The charge!" almost screamed Linda, in terrible disgust. "He is willing to undertake the charge, I say. We shall then still live together, and may hope to be able to maintain a God-fearing household, in which there may be as little opening to the temptations of the world as may be found in any well-ordered house." "I do not believe that Peter Steinmarc is a God-fearing man." "Linda, you are very wicked to say so." "But if he were, it would make no difference." "Linda!" "I only know that he loves his money better than anything in the world, and that he never gives a kreutzer to any one, and that he won't subscribe to the hospital, and he always thinks that Tetchen takes his wine, though Tetchen never touches a drop." "When he has a wife she will look after these things." "I will never look after them," said Linda. The conversation was brought to an end as soon after this as Madame Staubach was able to close it. She had done all that she had intended to do, and had done it with as much of good result as she had expected. She had probably not thought that Linda would be quite so fierce as she had shown herself; but she had expected tears, and more of despair, and a clearer protestation of abject misery in the proposed marriage. Linda's mind would now be filled with the idea, and probably she might by degrees reconcile herself to it, and learn to think that Peter was not so very old a man. At any rate it would now be for Peter himself to carry on the battle.