Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/319

"What I shall tell your uncle will be just this," said she; "Johanna cares for the deacon in the same way that I cared for you. That is why I took her off. He cannot blame me, for, if he should do so, it will show that his love for me is dead, and that," she added, in lower tones, and with a gay toss of her head, "I am sure is not the case."

Still Johanna said nothing. She was never a girl of many words, and this affair had the astonishing strangeness of the unexpected about it; that is to say, it so convinced Johanna of its absolute positiveness that had she known for years past that Hjorth loved her, she could not have felt more at home with the knowledge than she did then.

When they alighted at Vik station the farmer's wife, whose nervousness was becoming more assertive, proposed that they should go straight away to Hjorth's house.

"Better see him and make all arrangements," she remarked, "before going to your uncle's sister's. Then we shall know how to act. Let me see now. We have the address in the letter." She felt in her pocket for the letter, pulled out her handkerchief, an extra pair of gloves and her keys, then turned the pocket inside out, but there was no letter. "That is annoying," she said, "because I think I have left it on the table for everyone to look at. But we can't help it, and I remember that he lives in the Valbjerg-Gade."

"The number is 52," Johanna said quietly, drawing the letter from her own pocket.

Their few belongings the women had packed in a couple of boxes used by Norwegians, oval wooden things, gaily painted, with tightly fitting tops and convenient handles. These they carried to Hjorth's lodgings, where they arrived ten minutes after leaving the station. The trepidation, which Frue Berg was slowto