ways given her
pleasure. She had never felt so attracted towards any one since as she
had been to that girl; and now after her great disappointment,
Elizabeth's features, so full of character and expression, were
constantly before her. She had seen her sometimes in Arendal, and
thought she knew the reason why Elizabeth always seemed to avoid meeting
her; for she had found once, by chance, among some old letters in one of
her husband's drawers, the note which Elizabeth had written to him.

It had been no shock to her. By that time she had come to know his
volatile nature, and had given up all hope of ever being more to him
than another would be.

On the occasions when she had caught a glimpse of the pilot's wife in
the street, she had looked searchingly into her face to try and satisfy
herself whether she looked happy. But she had not been able to do so;
there seemed to be something on Elizabeth's mind. And taking this
impression in connection with what she heard of the pilot, of his
hardness and uncompanionable temper, she thought that it was clear
enough that Elizabeth too, was unhappy in her married life, and longed
to have a talk with her, to know whether she herself was not the more
unhappy of the two.

Nor had Fru Beck's uncommon pallor escaped Elizabeth's notice, and she
also longed to have a talk again with her friend of former days; but
Beck's house was for many reasons impossible ground for her. As she was
standing one day with Gjert on the quay, about to start for home, Fru
Beck passed a little way off, leaning on her husband's arm, and looked
back with an expression so sad, and with eyes that seemed to linger so
longingly, as if she had something she wanted to say, or to confide,
that they nodded involuntarily to one another.

Since then they had never met, for from that time Elizabeth had scarcely
ever been in Arendal.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Gjert was now ten years old; and whilst his father was sitting over his
glass in Mother Andersen's parlour, he used generally to amuse himself
out in the harbour with a number of the Arendal boys with whom he had
struck up an acquaintanceship, and who understood very little about
differences of social position.

The brown-haired, brown-eyed little lad, with his sharp, intelligent
face, was the wildest of them all, and enjoyed a certain consideration
among them at the same time as his father's son--an honour which he
evidently thought it incumbent upon him to ma