“We are not likely to discuss the matter,” said Sigrid, and rising to her feet she hurriedly left the room. Upstairs she ran, choking with angry tears, her aunt’s last words haunting her persistently and inflicting deeper wounds the more she dwelt upon them. “She wants me to marry him so that she may be rid of the expense of keeping us,” thought the poor girl. “She doesn’t really care for us a bit, for all the time she is grudging the money we cost her. But I wont be such a bad friend to poor Torvald as to marry him because I am miserable here. I would rather starve than do that. Oh! how I hate her maxims about taking what you can get! Why should love and equality and a true union lead to misery and mischief? It is the injustice of lowering woman into a mere pleasant housekeeper that brings half the pain of the world, it seems to me.” But by the time Sigrid had lived through the long evening, bearing, as best she might, the consciousness of her aunt’s disappointment and vexation with her, another thought had begun to stir in her heart. And when that night she went to her room her tears were no longer the tears of anger, but of a miserable loneliness and desolation. She looked at little Swanhild lying fast asleep, and wondered how the refusal would affect her life. “After all,” she thought to herself, “Swanhild would have been happier had I accepted him. She would have had a much nicer home, and Torvald would never have let her feel that she was a burden. He would have been very kind to us both, and I suppose I might have made him happy—as happy as he would ever have expected to be. And I might have been able to help Frithiof, for we should have been rich. Perhaps I am losing this chance of what would be best for every one else just for a fancy. Oh, what am I to do? After all, he would have been very kind, and here they are not really kind. He would have taken such care of me, and it would surely be very nice to be taken care of again.” And then she began to think of her aunt’s words, and to wonder whether there might not be some truth in them, so that by the time the next day had dawned she had worried herself into a state of confusion, and had Torvald Lundgren approached her again might really have accepted him from some puzzle-headed notion of the duty of being practical and always considering others before yourself. Fortunately Torvald did not appear, and later in the morning she took her perplexities to dear old Fru Askevold, the pastor’s wife, who having worked early and late for her ten children, now toiled for as many grandchildren, and into the bargain was ready to be the friend of any girl who chose to seek her out. In spite of her sixty years she had a bright, fresh-colored face, with a look of youth about it which contrasted curiously with her snowy hair. She was little, and plump and had a brisk, cheerful way of moving about which somehow recalled to one—