Ingeborg said nothing; she merely bit off her thread reflectively as she followed Ragna's retreating figure with her eyes. Less impulsive than Lotte, and endowed with a finer intuition, she felt that if Ragna were keeping something from them it would be useless to try and drag it out of her, and not only that, she realized as Lotte did not, that each of us has his or her own little "Secret Garden," of memory and fancy, of which no hand, however intimate, may open the gate. But vaguely conscious of this, herself, she felt how useless it would be to explain it to Lotte, whose frank curiosity knew no such restraint. Lotte stitched on viciously, indignant at the snub she had received, and giving vent to her feelings in intermittent monologue. "She thinks us ninnies or children, that's what she does, but she's not so awfully grown up, after all! She's not nineteen yet, and I'm sixteen, and you're nearly fifteen. Oh, yes, we're not good enough for her Ladyship to talk to; she's used to Princes and Kings and Popes, she is! And she thinks she has come back to teach us her fine French manners!" Ragna walked on, away from her sisters and away from the house. Her path lay some way through the woods, then across two or three pastures and out to a rocky point overlooking the fjord. She marched on, looking neither to the right nor to the left, consumed with vexation for having been so easily led on to retort. Of course Lotte had been annoying, but she had always been a bundle of curiosity. And how sharp the child was! "I must be a transparent fool," thought poor Ragna, "if any child can see through me like that!" As she crossed the third pasture someone hailed her; she looked up, and saw, sitting on a rock under a tree, her Aunt Gitta, knitting industriously, a sheaf of flowers lying on the ground beside her. Ragna went to her, and she indicated a place on the boulder beside her. "Sit down, Ragna," she said, "I have been wishing for a chance to talk to you alone." Ragna obediently seated herself, and drawing the flowers to her, began sorting them and making them up into bouquets. Fru Boyesen coughed once or twice, as though in doubt how to begin. She looked at her niece in a tentative way, but the girl was seemingly intent on her flowers, and gave no assistance. Finally in a rather embarrassed manner, she began by asking Ragna what she thought of doing. "Doing, Aunt Gitta?" asked Ragna, lifting her head in surprise, "I had not thought of doing anything!" "Then your father has not told you?" "He has told me nothing,--what is there to tell?" "You have been away for two years, and I suppose no one wished to worry you, but the fact is," Aunt Gitta lowered her voice as if about to reveal some terrible secret,--and really, to her practical mind anything connected with money-loss was terrible,--"the fact is that your father has lost money in several ways and the estate is mortgaged!"