ould talk of George Lorimer and Pierre
Duprez,--and she would call for Britta often, sometimes
endearingly--sometimes impatiently.

The picture of her home in Warwickshire seemed to haunt her,--she spoke
of its great green trees, its roses, its smooth sloping lawns--then she
would begin to smile and sing again in such a weak, pitiful fashion that
Ulrika,--her stern nature utterly melted at the sight of such innocent
helpless distraction and sorrow,--could do nothing but fold the
suffering creature in her arms, and rock her to and fro soothingly on
her breast, the tears running down her cheeks the while.

And after long hours of bewilderment and anguish, Errington's child, a
boy, was born--dead. With a regretful heart, Ulrika laid out the tiny
corpse,--the withered blossom of a promised new delight, a miniature form
so fair and perfect that it seemed sheer cruelty on the part of nature
to deny it breath and motion. Thelma's mind still wandered--she was
hardly conscious of anything--and Ulrika was almost glad that this was
so. Her anxiety was very great--she could not disguise from herself that
Thelma's life was in danger,--and both she and Valdemar wrote to Sir
Philip Errington, preparing him for the worst, and urging him to come at
once,--little aware that the very night the lifeless child was born, was
the same on which he had started from Hull for Christiansund, after his
enforced waiting for the required steamer. There was nothing more to be
done now, thought Ulrika piously, but to trust in the Lord and hope for
the best. And Valdemar Svensen made with his own hands a tiny coffin for
the body of the little dead boy who was to have brought such pride and
satisfaction to his parents, and one day rowed it across the Fjord to
that secret cave where Thelma's mother lay enshrined in stone. There he
left it, feeling sure he had done well.

Ulrika asked him no questions--she was entirely absorbed in the duties
that devolved upon her, and with an ungrudging devotion strange to see
in her, watched and tended Thelma incessantly, scarcely allowing herself
a minute's space for rest or food. The idea that her present
ministration was to save her soul in the sight of the Lord, had grown
upon her, and was now rooted firmly in her mind--she never gave way to
fatigue or inattention,--every moan, every restless movement of the
suffering girl, obtained her instant and tender solicitude, and when she
prayed now, it was not for herself