e conducive to good; and thus our own errors may be made steps
on our way to improvement.

"Greet your sisters cordially from their and your tenderly devoted

"Father."

Petrea kissed these lines with tears of grateful joy. She wore them for
several days near her heart; she preserved them through her whole life
as one of the endeared means by which she had gone happily through the
chromatic scale of existence.

Louise was joked much about Cousin Thure; Cousin Thure was joked much
about Louise; it pleased him very much to be joked about her, to be told
that Oestanvik wanted a mistress, that he himself wanted a pretty wife,
and that without doubt Louise Frank was one of the most sensible as well
as one of the prettiest girls in the country; and more than this, was
besides of such a respectable family! The Landed-proprietor received
already felicitations on his betrothal.

What the bride-elect, however, thought on the matter was more difficult
to fathom. She was certainly always polite to Cousin Thure; still this
politeness seemed expressive rather of indifference than friendship; and
she declined, with a decision amazing to many people, his pressing and
often repeated solicitations to make an excursion to Oestanvik in his
new landau, drawn by what he styled "his foxes--his four horses in one
rein." Many people asserted that the agreeable and cordial Jacobi was
much nearer to Louise's heart than the rich Landed-proprietor! but even
towards Jacobi her conduct was so equal, so tranquil, so unconstrained,
that nobody could exactly tell how it might be. Nobody knew so well as
we do, that Louise considered it consistent with the dignity of woman to
show only perfect indifference to the attentions or _doux-propos_ of
men, until they had been openly and fully declared. Louise despised
coquetry so far as to dread anything which bordered on the very limits
of it. Her young female friends joked with her upon her strict notions
on this head, and fancied that she would remain unmarried.

"That may be," said Louise, calmly.

They told her one day of a gentleman who said "I will not stand up
before any girl who is not some little of a coquette."

"Then he may remain sitting," answered Louise, with much dignity.

Louise's views of the dignity of woman, her grave and decided
principles, and her manner of expressing them, amused her young friends,
whilst at the same time they inspired for