With each visit of the Colour-Sergeant memories of the Lieutenant’s dead sister became more and more poignant. She was the eldest child; she had cared for him when he was a little chap, had dressed and undressed him, and coddled him. He had loved her best of all his sisters, had been more proud of her than of the others. And then she had to go and fall in love with a worthless fellow like this Wachenfeldt! She was both beautiful and noble, and as good and true as she looked. She had always been sunny, and had brightened the lives of those about her. She had striven to the last breath to keep her home; the husband had only wasted and squandered. She would not let her family know how hard she had it, lest they should come to her aid. So she broke under the strain when she was barely forty. It was a sad and distressing tale, and the Lieutenant, while this was seething in him, could not be cordial to Von Wachenfeldt; he had therefore to take a long walk to let his indignation cool a bit. Fru Lagerlöf and Mamselle Lovisa felt much as he did. Anna Wachenfeldt had been the favourite sister-in-law of Fru Lagerlöf, who had looked up to her with genuine admiration. Anna had been the one to welcome her most heartily into the family, and she could never forgive Colour-Sergeant von Wachenfeldt for making this beloved woman unhappy. Mamselle Lovisa, as a child, had made long visits at Valsäter, the home of the Wachenfeldts, and knew more about her sister’s troubles than any of them. She could never hear the name Wachenfeldt without thinking of a certain morning when a couple of strange men came to Valsäter and led from the barn the two best cows. Her sister had run out and asked them what they were doing there, and they had coolly answered that the Sergeant the night before had staked the cows in a game with their master, and lost. Mamselle Lovisa saw her sister as it were before her, and remembered how distressed she had been over this. “He will never come to his senses,” she had said, “until he has made an end of me.” However, Mamselle Lovisa was the first to think of her duties as hostess. She got up from the sewing table, where she had been embroidering and betimes taking little peeps into a novel that lay open in her sewing basket, and went to the kitchen door. “Maja dear,” she called to the housekeeper, apologetically, “now we have Wachenfeldt here again!” “I can’t understand why that fellow, who was so mean to his wife, is allowed to come here at every holiday time,” the housekeeper retorted with considerable asperity. “But one can’t very well drive him away,” pleaded Mamselle Lovisa. “And now, Maja, please put the coffeepot on, so that he’ll have something to warm him a bit after his long, cold drive.” “Why must he always come just when you’ve all had your coffee and the fire’s gone dead in the stove!” The housekeeper looked as if she were not going to make a move.