“Aasmund counselled us, you understand, to take this proffer,” said Ragnfrid. “But at that Lavrans grew more wroth than I can call to mind I saw him ever before. He said that a wooer who tried to come to his daughter by that road should find him in his path, sword in hand. ’Twas little honour enough to us to have dealt as we had with the Dyfrin folk; but were it so that Erlend had lured you out to gad about the ways in the darkness with him, and that while you were dwelling in a cloister of holy nuns, ’twas a full good token you would be better served by far by missing such a husband.” Kristin crushed her hands together in her lap—the colour came and went in her face. Her mother put an arm about her waist—but the girl shrank away from her, beside herself with the passion of her mood, and cried: “Let me be, mother! Would you feel, maybe, if my waist hath grown—” The next moment she was standing up, holding her hand to her cheek—she looked down bewildered at her mother’s flashing eyes. None had ever struck her before since she was a little child. “Sit down,” said Ragnfrid. “Sit down,” she said again, and the girl was fain to obey. The mother sat a while silent; when she spoke, her voice was shaking: “I have seen it full well, Kristin—much have you never loved me. I told myself, maybe ’twas that you thought I loved not you so much—not as your father loves you. I bided my time—I thought when the time came that you had borne a child yourself, you would surely understand— “While yet I was suckling you, even then was it so, that when Lavrans came near us two, you would let go my breast and stretch out towards him, and laugh so that my milk ran over your lips. Lavrans thought ’twas good sport—and God knows I was well content for his sake. I was well content, too, for your sake, that your father laughed and was merry each time he laid eyes on you. I thought my own self ’twas pity of you, you little being, that I could not have done with all that much weeping. I was ever thinking more whether I was to lose you too, than joying that I had you. But God and His Holy Mother know that I loved you no whit less than Lavrans loved.” The tears were running down over Ragnfrid’s cheeks, but her face was quite calm now, and so too was her voice: “God knows I never bore him or you a grudge for the love that was between you. Methought ’twas little enough joy I had brought him in the years we had lived together; I was glad that he had joy in you. I thought, too, that had my father, Ivar, been such a father to me— “There are many things, Kristin, that a mother should have taught her daughter to beware of. But methought there was little need of this with you, who have followed about with your father all these years—you should know, if any know, what right and honour are. That word you spoke but now—think you I could believe you would have the heart to bring on Lavrans such a sorrow—?