The gap which the father left in the life of this family consisting of four women, the social solitude, the cessation of so many relations which promised stimulation and pleasure, the increased infirmity of the mother, all these clouded the mood of our patient, but simultaneously stimulated a warm desire that the family might soon find a substitute for the lost happiness and urged her to concentrate her entire devotion and care on the surviving mother. At the end of the mourning year the eldest sister married a talented and ambitious man of notable position, who by his mental capacity seemed to be destined for a great future, but who, however, very soon developed a morbid sensitiveness and egotistic perseveration of moods, and dared to show his disregard for the old lady in the family circle. That was more than Elisabeth could endure. She felt herself called upon to take up the fight against her brother-in-law whenever he gave occasion for it, while the other women took lightly the outburst of his excited temperament. To her it was a painful disillusionment to find that the reconstruction of the old family happiness experienced such a disturbance. She could not forgive her married sister because with feminine docility she strove to avoid espousing her cause. Thus a whole series of scenes remained in Elisabeth’s memory to which were attached a number of partially uttered grievances against her first brother-in-law. But what she reproached him most for was the fact that for the sake of a promotion in view he moved with his small family to a distant city in Austria and thus increased the lonesomeness of her mother. On this occasion Elisabeth distinctly felt her inability and helplessness to afford her mother a substitute for the lost happiness, and the impossibility of following out the resolution made at the death of her father.