"Stay!" called the father. "Promise me thou wilt think no more of Lovisa!"

"I had nearly forgotten her," she responded. "Poor thing! She cursed me because she is so miserable, I suppose—all alone and unloved; it must be hard! Curses sometimes turn to blessings, father! Good night!"

And she ascended the one flight of wooden stairs in the house to her own bedroom—a little three-cornered place as clean and white as the interior of a shell. Never once glancing at the small mirror that seemed to invite her charms to reflect themselves therein, she went to the quaint latticed window and knelt down by it, folding her arms on the sill while she looked far out to the Fjord. She could see the English flag fluttering from the masts of the Eulalie; she could almost hear the steady plash of the oars wielded by Errington and his friends as they rowed themselves back to the yacht. Bright tears filled her eyes, and brimmed over, falling warmly on her folded hands.

"Would I care if you suffered?" she whispered. "Oh, my love! . . . my love!"

Then, as if afraid lest the very winds should have heard her half-breathed exclamation, she shut her window in haste, and a hot blush crimsoned her cheeks.

Undressing quickly, she slipped into her little white bed and, closing her eyes, fancied she slept, though her sleep was but a waking dream of love in which all bright hopes reached their utmost fulfillment, and yet were in some strange way crossed with shadows which she had no power to disperse. And later on, when old Güldmar slumbered soundly, and the golden mid-night sunshine lit up every nook and gable of the farmhouse with its lustrous glory, making Thelma's closed lattice sparkle like a carven jewel,—a desolate figure lay prone on the grass beneath her window, with meagre pale face, and wide-open wild blue eyes upturned to the fiery brilliancy of the heavens. Sigurd had come home;—Sigurd was repentant, sorrowful, ashamed,—and broken-hearted.

[!-- H2 anchor --] CHAPTER XIII.

"O Love! O Love! O Gateway of Delight!
Thou porch of peace, thou pageant of the prime
Of all God's creatures! I am here to climb
Thine upward steps, and daily and by night
To gaze beyond them and to search aright
The far-off splendor of thy track sublime."

ERIC MACKAY'S Love-letters of a Violinist.