‘How can I describe the feelings with which I have heard of the strange things that have happened to you–of your illness (thank God that you are now restored to us!)–and of your marriage to Rudolf Falkenberg? I knew he loved you. I flatter myself that I was the very first to discover how suitable and delightful such a marriage would be. I can only offer to both of you my most hearty, unmixed congratulations. _Ja, ich gratulire vom ganzen Herzen, und mein Mann auch._ I think, if ever there was a noble, generous, good fellow, it is the man you have married. I should say he was perfect if I were speaking to an ordinary person, but I know you agree with me that perfect people must be so very horrid, and it always sounds to me more of an insult than anything else to call a person perfect. But it is a perfect arrangement all the same. How seldom, dear Sara, do we find the ways of Providence exemplified thus clearly and simply–everything working together for good in so palpable a manner that he who runs may read.’ [The countess’s moral reflections had been wont, in former days, to excite Sara’s intense amusement. Even now, in the tumult of her feelings, she could not help smiling at this specimen of them.] ‘It does my heart good–it does indeed. I feel as happy as I did myself when I had just been married to Fritz. Write, or get your husband to write, as soon as possible, to tell me how soon you will come to see us, and what your movements are going to be. How I long to see you both! ‘Yours, ‘CARLA VON TROCKENAU.’ Sara drew a long breath as she finished reading this effusion, and the colour rushed over her cheeks and brow and throat. Now, for the first time, she began to realise what the step meant that she had taken. In vain she tried to reassure herself by recalling Rudolf’s promise that she should not repent, and that he would never repent. She could not be calm; she could not view the matter indifferently. She could not rid herself of the idea that she had hurried and hastened to take an irrevocable step; that in her agony of outraged pride and love repulsed, she had promised, and in her after state of helpless weakness and weary indifference she had done that which might mar a good man’s life, and make her own even more miserable than she had expected it would be. What was she to do? How to meet him? When he came she must brace herself to the task of coming to some explanation, and she shrank in anticipation from what must be so intensely painful an interview.