"Then Mademoiselle Ragna is quite an heiress?"
"Yes, Ragna will be very well off, some day, but she is such a queer girl,—I don't think she ever thinks of it at all."
"She is engaged to be married?"
"Oh, no!"
"Yet, she can have no lack of suitors?"
"She had half Christiania at her heels, but there,—I tell you she is not like other girls, I doubt if she will ever marry. Ragna is queer, sometimes you know, in Rome now,—" she stopped suddenly.
"Well, what of Rome?"
"Oh, nothing, I don't know!"
"But there must be something, since you say it in that tone of voice. I am curious, who was there in Rome?" His eyes interrogated her stealthily over his lowered palette.
It came to Astrid with a shock that perhaps she had not been altogether discreet—the man's too evident curiosity put her on her guard. She assumed an air of kittenish dignity.