They were taking it on this fateful day in the attic. They vowed never
to marry even if their formidable papa locked them up on bread and
water.

"Which would be rather good for us," remarked the practical Elsa. "I am
sure we eat too much, and Gisela has a tendency to plumpness. But your
turn will not come for four years yet, dear child. It is poor us that
will need all our vows."

After some deliberation they concluded to inform their mother of their
grim resolve. Naturally sympathetic, a pregnant upheaval had taken place
in that good lady's psychology during the past year. Her marriage,
although arranged by the two families, had been a love match on both
sides. The Graf was a handsome dashing and passionate lover and she a
beautiful girl, lively and companionable. Disillusion was slow in
coming, for she had been brought up on the soundest German principles
and believed in the natural superiority of the male as she did in the
House of Hohenzollern and the Lutheran religion.

But she suspected, during her thirties, that she was, after all, the
daughter of a brilliant father as well as of an obsequious mother, and
that she had possibilities of mind and spirit that clamored for
development and fired the imagination, while utterly without hope. In
other words she was, like many another German woman, in her secret
heart, an individual. But she was not a rebel; her social code forbade
that. She manufactured interests for herself as rapidly, and as various,
as possible, preserved her good looks in spite of her eight children
(the two that followed Gisela died in infancy), dressed far better than
most German women, cultivated society, gave four notable musicales a
season, and was devoted to her sons and daughters, although she never