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It was clearly to her God's will that these two people should be married, and she could not but be right to leave the result to His wisdom. A day was named. With a simple nod of her head Linda agreed that she would become Peter's wife on the fifteenth of March; and she received visits from Herr Molk and from Jacob Heisse to congratulate her on her coming happiness.
There was Fanny Heisse who lived close to them, who had been Linda's friend when they went to school together.
"I am sorry you should ask that question, Linda." "I have no friends." "Linda, that is ungrateful to God, and thankless. I say nothing of myself." "You are my friend, but no one else." "Herr Molk is your friend, and has shown himself to be so. Jacob Heisse is your friend." He, too, using such wisdom as he possessed, had recommended Linda to take the husband provided for her.
Linda heard it all, marvelling in her dumb half-consciousness. This was the Fanny Heisse of whom her aunt had so often told her that one so given to the vanities of the world could never come to any good! Max Bogen handed Linda over to his wife, and then disappeared. "Oh, Linda, what is it? Why are you here? Dear Linda."
But there were none in the town, no, not one, who could interfere as a friend in the affairs of the widow Staubach's household, or who ever thought of asking Linda to sit at a friendly hearth. Close neighbourhood and school acquaintance had made Fanny Heisse her friend, but it was very rarely indeed that she had set her foot over the threshold of Jacob's door.
When you left me at the station I was too ill to go to the place you told me; so they sent to this house, and my dear, dear friend Fanny Heisse got her husband to come for me, and I am in their house now. Then my aunt came, and she will take me home to-morrow. I am so unhappy that you should be in trouble! I hope that my coming with you did not help to bring it about.
Her aunt had often spoken to her, with fear and trembling, of the mode of life in which their neighbours opposite lived. The daughters of Jacob Heisse were allowed to dance, and talk, and flirt, and, according to Madame Staubach, were living in fearful peril.
She did not leave the house once except in her aunt's company, and restrained herself even from leaning over the wicket-gate and listening to the voice of Fanny Heisse. There were moments during these days in which she thought that her opposition to her aunt's plan had had the desired effect, and that she was not to be driven mad by the courtship of Peter Steinmarc.
For how much would such a man as Jacob Heisse, who thought of nothing but working hard, in order that his four girls might always have fine dresses, for how much would he be called upon to answer in the last day?
She would have gone to Jacob Heisse, but that Jacob was a man slow of speech, somewhat timid in all matters beyond the making of furniture, and but little inclined to meddle with things out of his own reach. She fancied that the counsel which she required should be sought for from some one wiser and more learned than Jacob Heisse.
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