sumed--"Now
you will give Morris my message, Britta--and then come to me in my
bedroom--I am tired, and Philip said I was not to wait up for him."

Britta departed, and Thelma went rather slowly up-stairs. It was now
nearly midnight, and she felt languid and weary. Her reflections began
to take a new turn. Suppose she told her husband all that had occurred,
he would most certainly go to Sir Francis and punish him in some
way--there might then be a quarrel in which Philip might suffer--and all
sorts of evil consequences would perhaps result from her want of
reticence. If, on the other hand, she said nothing, and simply refused
to receive Lennox, would not her husband think such conduct on her part
strange? She puzzled over these questions till her head ached--and
finally resolved to keep her own counsel for the present,--after what
had happened. Sir Francis would most probably not intrude himself again
into her presence. "I will ask Mrs. Lorimer what is best to do," she
thought. "She is old and wise, and she will know."

That night, as she laid her head on her pillow, and Britta threw the
warm _eidredon_ over her, she shivered a little and asked--

"Is it not very cold, Britta?"

"Very!" responded her little maid. "And it is beginning to snow."

Thelma looked wistful. "It is all snow and darkness now at the
Altenfjord," she said.

Britta smiled. "Yes, indeed, Froeken! We are better off here than there."

"Perhaps!" replied Thelma a little musingly, and then she settled
herself as though to sleep.

Britta kissed her hand, and retired noiselessly. When she had gone,
Thelma opened her eyes and lay broad awake looking at the flicker of
rosy light flung on the ceiling from the little suspended lamp in her
oratory. All snow and darkness at the Altenfjord! How strange the
picture seemed! She thought of her mother's sepulchre,--how cold and
dreary it must be,--she could see in fancy the long pendent icicles
fringing the entrance to the sea-king's tomb,--the spot where she and
Philip had first met,--she could almost hear the slow, sullen plash of
the black Fjord against the shore. Her maiden life in Norway--her school
days at Arles,--these were now like dreams,--dreams that had passed away
long, long ago. The whole tenor of her existence had changed,--she was a
wife,--she was soon to be a mother,--and with this near future of new
and sacred joy before her, why did she to-night so persistently look
backward to the past?