confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something
different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that
she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have
been away, gadding about, God knows where, in the world. It's true
enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it
was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of
the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in
Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law."

A wild gleam of joy broke over Salvé's features for a moment, but they
relapsed almost immediately into gloom.

"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then?" he asked.

"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a
hair's-breadth from the truth. "She allowed herself to be betrayed into
saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have
him. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said
'no' to you."

"So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically. "The 'yes' and
'no' meant that the Becks wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, and
bundled her out of the house over to Holland; and you want me to believe
it was for my sake she went. God knows," he added, sadly, and shaking
his head slowly, "I would willingly believe it--more willingly than I
can say; but I can't, Mother Kirstine. You are her aunt, and want of
course to--"

"I'm afraid it is your misfortune, Salvé," she broke in severely, "not
to have it in your power to believe thoroughly in any one creature upon