"How did that occur to you?"
"I don't know. But was it he?"
"Yes, it was. Yes, I see you don't understand it. I never understood it myself, either. Think of your father, and of him! And just about the same time, too. What do you think of me? But, oh! take care of yourself, my child."
"Mother?"
"Well, well—you have a mother, and I had none. And I was at Court, and, as I told you, at the perilous age when nothing seems worth caring about any longer. Of course I, too, had been playing the same game that I have been looking on at to-day, but not with your aptitude. Yes, you may turn away your face. I had come to feel a certain disgust with life—for myself among the rest—and so I went on refusing people till it was too late in the day."
"But—with my uncle!" Magne broke out again.
"We looked upon him differently at that time. But I don't want to go into all that again now. I will only admit that it was horrible. So you may think what you like about it—I mean as to how it came about."
The daughter took her arm away and looked at her mother.
"Yes, Magne, we don't always do as we mean to do, and I have told you I was at the perilous age. And so you can understand how I felt when I saw your father—there was something more than pettiness and frivolity in me after all."
"But the others, mother! How could you put it in the proper light to the others, to the Court, to our relations, to my uncle, and all his people? Surely there must have been a fuss and a scandal that you had to hold up your head against?"