Fru Boyesen eagerly tore open the envelope with its foreign stamp and post mark, but as she mastered the meaning of the first sentences her hands dropped and she gave a cry of astonishment.

"What is it, Auntie?" asked Ingeborg who had recognised her sister's handwriting.

Fru Boyesen speechlessly waved a hand; she resettled the gla.s.ses on her nose and continued her perusal of the letter, growing red in the face as she proceeded. Ingeborg sat watching her with round anxious eyes exercising all her self-control in silencing the queries that crowded to her lips. The thin foreign paper crackled and creased as the pages were turned, and Ingeborg followed the close fine lines of writing, though too far away to distinguish a word. Crushing the letter in her hand Fru Boyesen rose to her feet, upsetting her cup of coffee; Ingeborg sprang forward, but the expression of her aunt's face was such as to drive from her mind the minor importance of the slight mishap, and the creamy liquid streamed unheeded to the floor.

"What is it, Aunt? Oh, do tell me!"

"Your sister," said Fru Boyesen, "has disgraced herself. She has married a foreigner that n.o.body ever heard of, without her family's permission--without mine. My consent! She never even asked it, she knew well enough what I would say! Oh, I knew there was something in the wind when that fool, Else Bjork, came back without her! You knew, Ingeborg, I wanted to go down to her, and you all persuaded me not to. G.o.d knows, if I had, I might have stopped this folly--but now listen to what the shameless idiot says!"

She smoothed out the crumpled sheets and glancing through them read out a paragraph here and there at random.

"'Dear Auntie:

"'I hope you are not going to be very angry when you hear my news. I know you won't approve, but perhaps by and by--I am sorry that I could not consult you, but it has all been so sudden. It would be difficult for me to explain to you so that you would understand, how it was I came to take this step'--I should think so indeed--'and knowing how little use it would be to try and make you, who are so far away, understand it all I thought it better not to attempt it--Fru Bjork knew nothing of this, and indeed there was nothing definite to know at the time she left, so you must not hold her in any way responsible. I know you will think me very foolish, but perhaps time will prove even to you--Signor Valentini is a young man of whom great things are predicted; he is very kind to me and we have many interests in common--'"

The reading was interrupted by the opening of the dining-room door and the appearance of Astrid rosy and smiling on the threshold. She glanced in amazement from Fru Boyesen's flushed face to Ingeborg's strained white one, noting the overturned coffee-cup and the letter in Fru Boyesen's trembling fingers.

"My dear Fru Boyesen!" she exclaimed, stepping forward, "what is the matter? Have you bad news?" Then recognising the handwriting of the letter--"Has Ragna--?"

"Come here, Astrid," said Fru Boyesen, "tell me what you know of this disgraceful business."

"Disgraceful business!" echoed Astrid, in consternation.

"Yes, this marriage--"

"Marriage!" repeated Astrid almost dazed, "what marriage?"

"Ragna's marriage. What do you know of this Valentini person, this, this--"

"Valentini!" exclaimed Astrid, still amazed, but with a note of comprehension in her voice. "Ragna has married Valentini?"

"You knew him then?"

"Why, yes," said Astrid seating herself on the chair Ingeborg set for her. "We both knew him, he was our drawing master in Florence."

"A drawing master! My niece marry a drawing master! My niece!"

"But Fru Boyesen, he is not just a drawing master, he is an artist."

Now this conveyed absolutely nothing to the elder woman's mind. She considered artists a sort of licensed and decorative charlatans, a long-haired and casual fraternity, the froth rising to the surface of the solid and respectable ma.s.s of society, all very well in their place, no doubt, but to be kept at a discreet distance; beings as much outside the orbit of ordinary existence as the Milky Way or a handful of wandering meteors. To her mind Ragna might as well have married a peddler or an acrobat.

"An artist!" she repeated scornfully, flicking the letter with outraged fingers. "And she wastes six sheets of good paper in explanations that explain nothing!"

Astrid, glad to turn the point of the conversation, said,

"Ragna must surely have good reasons for what she has done."

"Reasons! She gives me no reasons. In the end this is what it amounts to: 'Dear Aunt, I have taken my own way; it is too late for you to change anything, so pray don't make a fuss, but make the best of it!'"

The bitterness in the good woman's voice was unmistakable.

"Oh, yes, she was afraid of our interference, of our disapproval--but disapproval counts for nothing with Madame, now. Well, she has made her bed, let her lie in it--nor look to me to feather her nest, I'm done with her!"

"Oh, Auntie," interposed Ingeborg's gentle voice, "she is fond of you, I know it; don't be so hard on her! Ragna would never do anything that wasn't right. I know, and she would never intentionally grieve you, who have been so good to her."

"Good to her, yes, I have been good to her and this is my reward; have ingrat.i.tude and an insolent disregard of me and my opinion! Ingeborg, and you too, Astrid, remember that from this day forth I wash my hands of Ragna Andersen--no I forgot, of Ragna Valentini; she is no longer my niece. She has chosen to flout me, well, she shall find out what it is to do without me, and I forbid you, both of you, ever to mention her name in my presence again. She is dead to me, as dead as if she lay in her coffin--do you understand?"

She crossed the room unsteadily and tearing the letter across, thrust it into the fireplace of the large porcelain stove, then swept from the room, leaving Ingeborg and Astrid gazing horror-stricken into each other's faces.

If Ragna could have brought her news in person, her presence, her affectionate manner would have had a very different effect. Aunt Gitta might have raged and stormed but the mere presence of her favourite niece, once the first shock was over, would have influenced her insensibly and outweighed her prejudice. If the letter had even been a tender pleading one--but poor Ragna, sore from her disillusionment, filled with hatred and disgust for herself and her surroundings, yet obliged to justify those same surroundings, and give some explanation of her reasons for her hurried marriage, had not been able to break through the false crust of formality. So much had, of necessity, to be concealed, so much left unexplained, that try as she would, her letter lacked the compelling note of genuine feeling, and seemed hard, cynical, almost insolent, in fact. If she had frankly opened her heart to her aunt, and had thrown herself on the good woman's mercy, the appeal would have had its effect after Fru Boyesen's horror and indignation had had time to cool, but poor Ragna, half from shame and despair, half from the desire to spare her family the inevitable sorrow entailed by a disclosure, had not been able to bring herself to a frank confession.

Even if Fru Boyesen had had insight enough to enable her to read between the lines of that poor inadequate letter,--but to her a word was a word, a sentence, a sentence, meaning just so much and no more, and all that she saw, was a high-handed disregard of her feelings and an impervious ingrat.i.tude for all the benefits she had conferred. It wounded her vanity not to have had her consent considered essential or even desirable. Her feelings were wounded, but they would have recovered--what are wounded feelings compared to a hurt sense of self-importance? So she hardened her heart.

Left together, Astrid and Ingeborg sat silent, neither wishing to be the first to speak, though Astrid was curious to learn all that she could of Ragna's extraordinary marriage. She reviewed in her mind the months spent in Italy, she remembered Ragna's long absences in Rome, and the half-formed suspicions they had aroused in her, then she called to mind her friend's changed demeanour in Florence, in Venice, her pallor, her lack of spirits. She remembered Ragna's feverish interest in her work, but not in her teacher, and the more she thought the more mystified did she become.

"She does not love Valentini," Astrid reflected, "at least she did not at that time, and it is not in the least like her to rush into a piece of folly like this. No, there must be something behind it all."

Ingeborg had fallen forward, her arms crossed on the table, her face hidden, weeping silently; Astrid went round the table to her, and laid a caressing hand on her shoulder.

"Don't cry, Ingeborg dear."

The girl raised her tear-stained countenance.

"Oh, Astrid, we shall never see her any more."

"What foolishness!"

"No, it is not foolishness, I feel it here," she said laying her hand on her heart; "she has gone from us for ever,--and Auntie has cast her off."

"Oh, don't let that worry you," said Astrid, "she will come round in time; I have seen Fru Boyesen in a temper before."

"But this is different, Ragna was the apple of her eye, and now--"

"All the more reason, little goose; it is only a question of time. She is sure to come round, especially with you here to put in a good word for Ragna now and then."

"I'm afraid it won't be much use, but I shall do my best," sighed Ingeborg, then in another tone, "tell me, Astrid, what is your candid opinion of this Signor Valentini?"

Astrid was rather taken aback by this sudden volte-face.

"I don't know that I have an opinion, I never thought much about him at all. He is a clever man, but curious; there seemed to be two of him, one very plausible and the other quite rude and rough. He is rather handsome in a way, and his family, I believe, is quite good. I could see when we were in Florence that he had his eye on Ragna--"

"Did she seem to like him then?" asked Ingeborg eagerly.

"I can't say she did, more than as a friend, but then it is hard to tell, Ragna is such a self-contained sort of girl. It struck me though,--but this is just between you and me,--that she had something on her mind, something that was worrying her, and that she took up the drawing and Valentini as a sort of distraction. It began in Rome, from the Carnival on she was not the same."

Ingeborg wrinkled her forehead thoughtfully, and nodded her head.

"Yes, now I think of it, there was a change in her letters too--but from there to marrying this man! Do you know, Astrid, in her letter to Aunt Gitta, never once did she say that she was in love with him and that is the only thing that would explain."

Astrid was standing before the mirror, fluffing her hair; she turned at Ingeborg's last words, and set her hands on her hips.