The young countess dances both waltz and quadrille. She takes part in both minuet and contra-dance; but after each dance she steals to the window in the wing. There is a light there and she can see how the major’s wife walks up and down in her room. She never seems to rest, but walks and walks. The countess takes no pleasure in the dance. She only thinks of the major’s wife going backwards and forwards in her prison like a caged wild beast. She wonders how all the others can dance. She is sure there are many there who are as much moved as she to know that the major’s wife is so near, and still there is no one who shows it. But every time she has looked out her feet grow heavier in the dance, and the laugh sticks in her throat. The bailiff’s wife notices her as she wipes the moisture from the window-pane to see out, and comes to her. “Such misery! Oh, it is such suffering!” she whispers to the countess. “I think it is almost impossible to dance to-night,” whispers the countess back again. “It is not with my consent that we dance here, while she is sitting shut up there,” answers Madame Scharling. “She has been in Karlstad since she was arrested. But there is soon to be a trial now, and that is why she was brought here to-day. We could not put her in that miserable cell in the courthouse, so she was allowed to stay in the weaving-room in the wing. She should have had my drawing-room, countess, if all these people had not come to-day. You hardly know her, but she has been like a mother and queen to us all. What will she think of us, who are dancing here, while she is in such great trouble. It is as well that most of them do not know that she is sitting there.” “She ought never to have been arrested,” says the young countess, sternly. “No, that is a true word, countess, but there was nothing else to do, if there should not be a worse misfortune. No one blamed her for setting fire to her own hay-stack and driving out the pensioners, but the major was scouring the country for her. God knows what he would have done if she had not been put in prison. Scharling has given much offence because he arrested the major’s wife, countess. Even in Karlstad they were much displeased with him, because he did not shut his eyes to everything which happened at Ekeby; but he did what he thought was best.” “But now I suppose she will be sentenced?” says the countess. “Oh, no, countess, she will not be sentenced. She will be acquitted, but all that she has to bear these days is being too much for her. She is going mad. You can understand, such a proud woman, how can she bear to be treated like a criminal! I think that it would have been best if she had been allowed to go free. She might have been able to escape by herself.” “Let her go,” says the countess.