“Farewell!” she said, in a rather toneless voice.

He sprang down to the boat that lay waiting for him below; but she didn’t look after him, and went in with bowed head the opposite way.

Small things often weigh heavily in the world of impressions.  Elizabeth had been overpowered by what seemed to her the magnanimity of his nature when he had declared that he would elevate her into the position of his wife; she felt that it was her worth in his eyes which had outweighed all other considerations.  That he should shrink from the inevitable conflict with his family she had on the other hand never for a moment imagined.  She had no doubt felt herself that it would be painful, but had stationed herself for the occasion behind his masculine shield.  When he now so unexpectedly began to press for time, at first even proposing to be away himself when the matter came on in his home, a feeling took possession of her which in her inward dread she instinctively clutched at as a drowning wretch at a straw, as it seemed to suggest a possibility even now of reconsidering her promise.

She had a hard and heavy time of it during the two days until Carl returned; and the nights were passed in fever.

On Saturday evening he came, and the first he greeted was herself:  he seemed almost, as she passed in and out of the room quiet and pale, as if he didn’t wish any longer to conceal the relations now existing between them.

He had with him a letter from his father, which was read aloud when the meal was over.  It was dated from a South American port, and mention was made in it of Salve among others.  Off Cape Hatteras they had had stormy weather, and had their topmast carried away.  It remained attached by a couple of ropes, and with the heavy sea that was running, was swinging backwards and forwards, as it hung, against the lower rigging, threatening to destroy it.  Salve Kristiansen had come forward in the emergency and ventured aloft to cut it adrift; and as he sat there the whole had gone over the side.  He fell with it, but had the luck to be caught in a top-lift as he fell, and so saved his life.  “It was pluckily done,” ended the account, “but nevertheless all is not exactly right about him, and he is not turning out as well as he promised.”

“I never expected very much from him,” remarked Carl, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders; “he’s a bad lot.”

He didn’t see the resentful eyes which Elizabeth fixed upon him for these words, and she sat for a long while afterwards out in the kitchen with her hands in her lap, silent and angry, thinking over them.  A resolution was forming in her mind.

Before they retired to rest, Carl whispered to her—­

“I have written to my father to-day, and—­to-morrow, Elizabeth, is our betrothal-day!”

Elizabeth was the last in the room, putting it to rights, and when she left she took a sheet of paper and writing materials with her.  She lay down on her bed; but about midnight she was sitting up by a light and disfiguring a sheet of paper with writing.  It was to this effect:—­