But when he was alone, his face looked ashen and sad, and his eyes had a world of grief in them. For that evening, at least, Willy Tonedale, his beautiful features illuminated by love and loss, might well have stood for the portrait of a man with a broken spirit.
And whilst he was passing through his hour of sadness, Katharine was reading a letter from the Danish botanists, Ejnar and Gerda Ebbesen, Knutty's nephew and niece. They wrote in answer to her letter to say that they had left Denmark and were spending their holidays at a Norwegian farm. They suggested that she might be inclined to bring the botanical parcel to them there. Their aunt was with them, and she was most interested to hear that Miss Frensham had made the acquaintance of her Englishman and his boy.
"I shall go," Katharine said. "There is nothing to prevent me."
"I shall see the old Dane whom he loves," she said, with a glow of warmth in her heart.
In a few days she packed up and went to Norway.