Now she is sallow, withered, and old. Perhaps he will not recognize her with her sixty years, but she has not come to be seen, but to see, to see the beloved of her youth, who has gone through life untouched by time, who is ever young, beautiful, glowing. She has come from so far away that she has not heard a word of the Broby clergyman. The coach clatters up the hill, and at the summit the pastorage is visible. “For the love of God,” whines a beggar at the wayside, “a copper for a poor man!” The noble lady gives him a piece of silver and asks where the Broby pastorage is. “The pastorage is in front of you,” he says, “but the clergyman is not at home, there is no one at the pastorage.” The little lady seems to fade away. The cool arbor vanishes, her lover is not there. How could she expect, after forty years, to find him there? What had the gracious lady to do at the vicarage? She had come to meet the minister. She had known him in the old days. Forty years and four hundred miles have separated them. And for each ten miles she has come nearer she has left behind her a year with its burden of sorrows and memories, so that when she now comes to the vicarage she is a girl of twenty again, without a care or a regret. The beggar stands and looks at her, sees her change under his eyes from twenty to sixty, and from sixty back again to twenty. “The minister is coming home this afternoon,” he says. The gracious lady would do best to drive down to the Broby inn and come again later. In the afternoon, the beggar can answer for it, the minister will be at home. A moment after, the heavy coach with the little faded lady rolls down the hill to the inn, but the beggar stands trembling and looks after her. He feels that he ought to fall on his knees and kiss the wheel tracks. Elegant, newly shaven, and washed, in shoes with shining buckles, with silk stockings, with ruffles and frills, the Broby clergyman stands at noon that same day before the dean’s wife at Bro. “A fine lady,” he says, “a count’s daughter. Do you think that I, poor man, can ask her to come into my house? My floors are black, my drawing-room without furniture, the dining-room ceiling is green with mildew and damp. Help me! Remember that she is a noble count’s daughter!” “Say that you have gone away!” “My dear lady, she has come four hundred miles to see me, poor man. She does not know how it is. I have not a bed to offer her. I have not a bed for her servants!” “Well, let her go again.” “Dear heart! Do you not understand what I mean? I would rather give everything I possess, everything that I have gathered together by industry and striving, than that she should go without my having received her under my roof. She was twenty when I saw her last, and it is now forty years ago! Help me, that I may see her in my house! Here is money, if money can help, but here more than money is needed.”