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“I had thought of sleeping here to-night, and not starting till to-morrow morning.”

“Sleep here, mother?” She turned towards her mother with a look of surprise.

“I want very much to talk to you this evening.”

The daughter recognised in her mother’s eyes the same expression she had seen there at the station at Christiania: and she flushed. Then she turned back again into the room.

“Yes, suppose we take a walk.” The mother came and put her arm round her neck.

Shortly after they were down by the river. It was between lights, and the softened hues of plain and ridge gave one a feeling of uncertainty.

A perfumed air was wafted from wood and meadow, and the rush of the river rose fiercely to their ears.

“It was of your father I wished to speak.”

“My father?”

The daughter tried to stop her, but the mother went on.

“It was here I first saw him. Did you never hear his name mentioned in Christiania?”

“No.” A tolerably long silence followed the “No.”

“If I have never spoken of him freely, I had my reasons, Magne. You shall hear them now. For now I can tell you everything; I have not been able to do so before.”

She waited for the daughter to make some rejoinder; but she made none.

The mother turned half round and pointed up towards the station, that is, towards the house which stood beside it.

“Can you see that broad roof there, to the right of the hotel? There are the assembly rooms, the library, and the rest. Your father has the credit of it; he gave all the timber. Well, it was there I first saw him, or rather from there I first saw him. I sat among the people who were going to hear him; the whole of the ground-floor is one single room with broad sloping galleries, and it is built after the American fashion; you know that your father went over there when he had finished his studies. Come, now, let us go on farther; I love this path by the riverside. I walked along it with your father just six weeks to the hour and day after I had first seen him, and by that time we were married.”

“I know.”

“You also know that I was maid of honour to the Queen when I came here. She intended going farther out towards the fjord, but first we were to spend a few days here among the mountains.

“We came here one Saturday afternoon (as you and I have to-day) and remained over Sunday. There was a great crowd of people on Sunday to see the Queen; they knew she was to go to church. In the afternoon they all thronged to the assembly rooms to hear your father speak. I had seen the announcement of it in the hotel. The Queen read it too; I stood at her side and said, ‘I do so terribly want to go.’ ‘Yes, go,’ she answered, ‘but you must be escorted by one of the gentlemen-in-waiting.’ ‘Here among the peasants!’ I asked, and I took measures to go alone.

“I found a seat under the gallery, but near a large window, from which I could see a long way down the road. And as Karl Mander didn’t come at the right time (he very seldom did) all necks were stretched to get a glimpse of him on the road; so I saw that he was to come from that direction. I looked, too, with the rest, and a long way off there were three men visible, walking arm-in-arm, one tall and two smaller, the tallest in the middle. I have very good sight, and thought at once that he could not be one of those, for they had been having too festive a time. They happened to stand still just at the moment, then they came along wavering, first to the right, then to the left. People began to whisper and titter. As the three drew nearer I felt instinctively that the tall one was Karl Mander, and felt ashamed.”