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A little while afterwards she said quite softly–the daughter was obliged to draw nearer to her, for the sound of the river swallowed up some of the words:

“Now you shall hear something, Magne; you have never heard it from me, and others are not likely to have told you.”

“What is it, mother? You almost frighten me.”

“At the time I met your father I was already engaged.”

“What do you say? You, mother?”

“Yes, I was engaged, and was to be married; and it was my last month with the Queen. The engagement had taken place, and was to be carried out with the highest sanction.”

“But to whom?”

“Ah, that is it! Didn’t I tell you before, that at the time I met your father I was in absolute despair?”

“You, mother? No.”

“I did not believe that life had anything to offer, or that I had anything to wait for. Most girls who arrive at the age of twenty-eight without anything having happened to them, anything that is worth rousing themselves for, believe that nothing is worth caring about. The age, or about that age, is the most perilous.”

“How do you mean?”

“That is when most girls come to despair.”

She took her daughter’s arm, which she pressed, and so they walked on together.

“I must confess it all to you”–but there she stopped.

“Who was it, mother?” She said it so softly that her mother didn’t hear, but she knew what it was.

“It was some one for whom you have but small respect, my child. And you are right.”

“My uncle?”

“How did that occur to you?”

“I don’t know. But was it he?”

“Yes, it was. Yes, I see you don’t understand it. I never understood it myself, either. Think of your father, and of him! And just about the same time, too. What do you think of me? But, oh! take care of yourself, my child.”

“Mother?”

“Well, well–you have a mother, and I had none. And I was at Court, and, as I told you, at the perilous age when nothing seems worth caring about any longer. Of course I, too, had been playing the same game that I have been looking on at to-day, but not with your aptitude. Yes, you may turn away your face. I had come to feel a certain disgust with life–for myself among the rest–and so I went on refusing people till it was too late in the day.”

“But–with my uncle!” Magne broke out again.

“We looked upon him differently at that time. But I don’t want to go into all that again now. I will only admit that it was horrible. So you may think what you like about it–I mean as to how it came about.”

The daughter took her arm away and looked at her mother.

“Yes, Magne, we don’t always do as we mean to do, and I have told you I was at the perilous age. And so you can understand how I felt when I saw your father–there was something more than pettiness and frivolity in me after all.”

“But the others, mother! How could you put it in the proper light to the others, to the Court, to our relations, to my uncle, and all his people? Surely there must have been a fuss and a scandal that you had to hold up your head against?”

“Wait, Magne, we will let all that alone till later. There were no ‘others’ at all! Some fishermen had seen us, and they had taken measures to find out who I was. Before it was known I had gone away, and within one month I was his wife. I had fallen into the hands of a man who did things thoroughly and at once. He was too simple to conceive any other way than to go straight forward. So it took place without any obstacles.”

“And what did people say? Was it a good thing for my father–I mean in people’s opinion–that he had married you?”

“You mean that he should marry a maid of honour?” she smiled. “Do you know what people said of it? Why, Karl Mander had publicly maligned the Queen–one of her maids of honour had heard him, and a month after she had eloped with him. That was about it. She had chosen the roughest man in the country. That was what people said.”