Worn down by her aunt’s relentless religious pressure, Linda finally promises to marry Peter although she knows inwardly that she can never become his wife, and after fleeing with the newly released Ludovic to Augsburg she returns alone in shame, later refusing to go with him when he appears again and claims her as his wife, while the proposed marriage to Peter also collapses after his cruel accusations, leaving Linda increasingly isolated from both the love she desired and the respectable future others tried to impose upon her. When Charlotte once more attempts to revive the marriage with Peter, Linda escapes alone to relatives in Cologne, but years of emotional coercion and the exhausting journey have destroyed her health, and although Charlotte finally recognizes the harm she has caused and nurses her without further reproach, Linda never recovers and dies there in July 1863, bringing the novel to a tragic conclusion in which rigid morality pursued without mercy destroys the very person it was intended to save.