ng valley. She stood like one who is about to sing, with lifted
head and open mouth, listening for the music before it sounds. But it
was not so: it was the sound of bygone music that she heard.

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 ou