It had been her custom to return to her aunt's parlour as soon as she heard Peter creaking in the room below, and she had still meant to do so on this evening; but hitherto she had been unable to move, or at any rate so to compose herself as to have made it possible for her to go into her aunt's presence. Had she not had the whole world of her own love story to fill her mind and her heart? "Linda, I have been expecting you to come down to me," said her aunt, gravely. "Yes, aunt Charlotte, and I was coming." "It is late now, Linda." "Then, if you please, I will go to bed," said Linda, who was by no means sorry to escape the necessity of returning to the parlour. "I could not go to my rest," said Madame Staubach, "without doing my duty by seeing you and telling you again, that it is very wicked of you to leave the room whenever our friend enters it. Linda, do you ever think of the punishment which pride will bring down upon you?" "It is not pride." "Yes, Linda. It is the worst pride in the world." "I will sit with him all the evening if he will promise me never again to ask me to be his wife." "The time will perhaps come, Linda, when you will be only too glad to take him, and he will tell you that you are not fit to be the wife of an honest man." Then, having uttered this bitter curse,--for such it was,--Madame Staubach went across to her own room. Linda, as she knelt at her bedside, tried to pray that she might be delivered from temptation, but she felt that her prayers were not prayers indeed. Even when she was on her knees, with her hands clasped together as though towards her God, her very soul was full of the presence of that arm which had been so fast wound round her waist. And when she was in bed she gave herself up to the sweetness of her love. With what delicious violence had that storm of kisses fallen on her! Then she prayed for him, and strove very hard that her prayer might be sincere. CHAPTER VII