"Yes: it is ridiculous!" said Miss Brandt, laughing. During this conversation they had reached the house, and Miss Brandt complained that something was yet pricking her ankle. They went into Miss Hjelm's room, and here a thorn was discovered and taken out. "How pretty and cosy this room really is!" said Miss Brandt, looking around. "In a situation like this one can surely live in the country summer and winter. Out with us at Taarback it blows in through the windows, doors, and very walls." "That must be bad in a whirlwind." "Yes--yes: still, it might be quite amusing when the whirlwind carried such billets: not that one would care for them; yet they might be interesting for a while." "Oh, yes! perhaps." "Yes: how do you think a young girl would like it, when there came from Heaven a billet, in which one pledged himself to her for time and eternity?" "That isn't easy to say; but I don't believe the occurrence quite so uncommon. A friend of mine once had such a billet blown to her, and she presented me with it." "Does one give such things away? Have you the billet?" "I will look for it," answered Miss Hjelm; and surely enough, after longer search in the sewing-table, in drawers, and small boxes, than was really necessary, she found it. Miss Brandt read it, taking care not to remark that it very much appeared to her as if it resembled the one the counsellor had mentioned. "And such a billet one gives away!" she said after a pause. "Yes: will you have it?" asked Miss Hjelm, as though after a sudden resolution. Miss Brandt's first impulse was an eager acceptance; but she checked herself almost as quickly, and answered: "Oh, yes, thank you, as a curiosity." Then slowly put it between her glove and hand. As Miss Brandt and her company rode away, said Miss Hjelm's cousin, a handsome, middle-aged widow, to her: "How is it, Ingeborg? It appears to me you laugh with one eye and weep with the other." "Yes: a soap-bubble has burst for me, and glitters, maybe, for another." "You know I seldom understand the sentimental enigmas: can you not interpret your words?" "Yes: to-day an illusion has vanished, that had lasted for six years." "For six years?" said her cousin, with an inquiring or sympathizing look. "So it began when you were hardly sixteen years." "Now do you believe, that when I was in my sixteenth year I saw an ideal of a man, and was enamoured of him, and to-day I hear that he is married." "No, I don't know as I believe just that," answered the cousin, dropping her eyes; "but I suppose that then you had a pretty vision, and have carried it along with you in silence--and with faith." "But it was something more than a vision; it was a letter--a love-letter." The cousin looked upon Ingeborg so inquiringly, so anxiously, that words were unnecessary. Beside this the cousin knew, that when Ingeborg was inclined to talk, she did so without being asked, and if she wished to be silent, she was silent.