"Well, in a way it's only what one might have expected from the turn which Mr Hansted's development had taken lately. One has long been able to see that it would turn to something of this sort."
"That is exactly why I can't help blaming myself in a measure, Ragnhild. I ought to have kept a tighter hand over him from the beginning. Who knows—perhaps he might have been saved then. I did at first have my suspicions … but after all, he was a man, and you can't treat a man as an invalid, before you are sure of the disease. But now I haven't a doubt—he is mad—completely off his head! When I look back I can follow the development of the disease, step by step, from the day he entered our house. It is the mother's insanity coming out in the son. Once in her youth, I believe, she caused a perfect scandal at a public meeting, by making a most revolutionary speech. And—oddly enough—I heard, among other things about her from Pastor Petersen, that it was in these parts that she tried to carry out her wild ideas at one time. She was in fact the originator of the High School at Sandinge, to which we owe all our disturbances. In that case, one can say with truth, that Mr Hansted is a sacrifice to his mother's youthful follies. But that's the way of the world!"
Miss Ragnhild no longer heard her father's words, and she hardly noticed when he left the room and shut himself into his study.
