"I hope you will be very, very happy. You are so bright and courageous, so energetic and gifted. Dear child, you are everything I wanted to be, but never was." He spoke in a low, absent-minded voice.
"I think," he said a moment later, "that when relations between two people are new, before their life is perfectly accorded, there are many small difficulties to overcome. I wish you could live elsewhere, not in this town. You should be alone, far from your own people—at first at least."
"Helge has applied for a post in Bergen, as you know," said Jenny, and the feeling of despair and anguish again seized her when she thought of him.
"Do you never speak to your mother about it? Why don't you? Are you not fond of your mother?"
"Of course I am fond of her."
"I should think it would be a good thing to talk to her about it—get her advice."
"It is no good asking anybody's advice—I don't like to speak to any one about these things," she said, wishing to dismiss the subject.
"No, you are perhaps.…" He had been standing half-way turned to the window. Suddenly his face changed, and he whispered in a state of excitement:
"Jenny, she is down there in the street!"
"Who?"
"She—Rebecca!"
Jenny rose. She felt she could have screamed with exasperation and disgust. She trembled; every fibre of her body was quivering with revolt. She would not be involved in all this—these wicked, odious suspicions, quarrels, spiteful words, and scenes—no, she would not.
"Jenny, my child, you are shivering—don't be afraid. I won't let her hurt you."
"Afraid? Far from it." She steeled herself at once. "I
