“'You've been breaking into the summer-house again with some one?' said the Captain. 'Yes,' said Fruen. 'And what more?' he asked. 'Everything,' said she. The Captain smiled at that and said: 'There's something frank and open about an answer like that; you can see what is meant almost at once.' Fruen said nothing to that. 'What you can see in that young puppy, I don't know--though he did help me once out of a fix.' Fruen looked at him then, and said: 'Helped you?' 'Yes,' said the Captain; 'backed a bill for me once.' And Fruen asked: 'I didn't know that.' Then the Captain: 'Didn't he tell you that?' Fruen shook her head. 'Well, what then?' he said again. 'Would it have made any difference if he had?' 'Yes,' said Fruen at first, and then, 'No.' 'Are you fond of him?' he asked. And she turned on him at once. 'Are you fond of Elisabet?' 'Yes,' answered the Captain; but he sat smiling after that. 'Well and good,' said Fruen sharply. Then there was a long silence. The Captain was the first to speak, 'You were right when you said that about thinking over things. I've been doing so. I'm not a vicious man, really; queerly enough, I've never really cared about drinking and playing the fool. And yet I suppose I did, in a way. But there's an end of it now.' 'So much the better for you,' she answered sullenly. 'Quite so,' says he again. 'Though it would have been better if you'd been a bit glad to hear it.' 'You can get Elisabet to do that,' says she. 'Elisabet,' says he--just that one word--and shakes his head. Then they said nothing for quite a while. 'What are you going to do now?' asks the Captain. 'Oh, don't trouble yourself about me,' said Fruen very slowly. 'I can be a nurse, if you like, or cut my hair short and be a school teacher, if you like.' 'If I like,' says he; 'no, decide for yourself.' 'I want to know what you are going to do first,' she says, 'I'm going to stay here where I am,' he answered, 'but you've turned yourself out of doors.' And Fruen nodded and said: 'Very well.'” “Oh,” from all in the kitchen. “Oh but, _Herregud_! it will come right again surely,” said Nils, looking round at the rest of us to see what we thought. For a couple of days after the Captain had gone, Fruen sat playing the piano all the time. On the third day Nils drove her to the station; she was going to stay with her mother at Kristianssand. That left us more alone than ever. Fruen had not taken any of her things with her; perhaps she felt they were not really hers; perhaps they had all come from him originally, and she did not care to have them now. Oh, but it was all a misery. Ragnhild was not to go away, her mistress had said. But it was cook that was left in charge of everything, and kept the keys, which was best for all concerned.