y Kajsa?"

The young girl blushed painfully at being thus addressed, but her uncle
had no suspicion that he had made a cruel speech.

Kajsa had felt that she had not acted wisely in treating Erik as she had
done, and she resolved for the future to show him more attention.

But it was a singular fact that Erik no longer cared for her, since he
felt himself elevated above her unjust disdain. Perhaps it was absence,
or the lonely hours which he had spent walking the deck at night, which
had revealed to him the poverty of Kajsa's heart; or it might be the
satisfaction he felt that she could no longer regard him as "a waif"; he
only treated her now with the most perfect courtesy, to which she was
entitled as a young lady and Dr. Schwaryencrona's niece.

All his preference now was for Vanda, who indeed grew every day more and
more charming, and was losing all her little village awkwardness under
the roof of an amiable and cultivated lady. Her exquisite goodness, her
native grace, and perfect simplicity, made her beloved by all who
approached her. She had not been eight days at Val-Fray, when Mrs.
Durrien declared positively that it would be impossible for her ever to
part with her.

Erik undertook to arrange with Mr. Hersebom and Dame Katrina that they
should leave Vanda behind them, with the express condition that he would
bring her himself every year to see them. He had tried to keep all his
adopted family with him, even offering to transport from Noroe the house
with all its furniture where he had passed his infancy. But this project
of emigration was generally regarded as impracticable. Mr. Hersebom and
Katrina were too old to change their habits. They would not have been
perfectly happy in a country of whose language and habits they were
ignorant. He was obliged, therefore, to permit them to depart, but not
before making such provision for them as would enable them to spend the
remainder of their days in ease and comfort, which, notwithstanding
their honest, laborious lives, they had been unable to accomplish.

Erik would have liked to have kept Otto at least, but he preferred his
fiord, and thought that there was no life preferable to that of a
fisherman. It must also be confessed that the golden-haired and
blue-eyed daughter of the overseer of the oil-works had something to do
with the attractions which Noroe had for him. At least we must conclude
so, since it was soon made known that he expected to marry her at t