"To your house in the market-place?" asked Miss Röy.
"Yes, to our house in the market-place. Though I ought no longer to say 'our' house!" The tears came again.
"You have only to let me know, and I shall come at once."
A week later Mary went to town—in the wildest November storm, the worst they had had in these parts. The fjords were not yet frozen over, so the steamer managed to reach town, but had to remain there.
Margrete Röy was much astonished at being summoned on such a day. It was to a warm, comfortable house she came, not the deserted one with the drawn down blinds which she was accustomed to see. She was conducted up an old-fashioned broad stair; the whole interior was in the style of the old town-houses of the beginning of last century.
Mary was in the farthest away of the suite of sitting-rooms, a red boudoir, unchanged since her mother's day. She was sitting on a sofa, beneath a large portrait of her mother. When she stood up in her black dress, pale and heavy-eyed under her crown of red hair, it struck Margrete Röy that she was the very image of sorrow, the most beautiful one that could be imagined. A solemn tranquillity surrounded her. She spoke as low as the storm outside permitted.
"I feel that you respect another's grief. I am also certain that you betray no secrets."
"I do not."
A little time passed before Mary said: "Who is Jörgen Thiis?"
"Who is he——?"