She came and stared at him, her face as white as a sheet, and from him out into the garden.
"Do you know what you are saying?" she asked.
Holmsen coloured, for this rough man was particularly faint-hearted. And, to relieve his embarrassment, he began to talk about a book which he had just read, one that every one ought to read--
"Prosper Lucas on Heredity" (L'hérédité naturelle).
The two young people in the apple-tree soon afterwards saw Dr. Knut Holmsen go down to the town, accompanied by Fru Rendalen, and a little later she returned, with two large volumes under her arm.
The following evening Tomas sailed, and remained away for two months. At both the ports which he visited he found letters, written every day since he sailed by the faithful Karl, as well as a few lines enclosed by his mother, but not a line from Augusta. She was ill, had a heart complaint--an enlarged heart, it was said. And Tomas remembered that latterly she had always wanted to be in the open air. She had pains in her heart, but a courageous girl like Augusta would naturally never succumb. She would get quite well again.
The ship returned to port late one evening. No one at "The Estate" had any idea of it before Tomas flung himself on to his mother's neck, in the parlour, as she sat there over her accounts.
"Tomas?" she exclaimed, almost as though she were seriously frightened, and that made him all the more crazy with delight. He clung to her portly person with all his strength ... then ... he noticed that she was crying. Astonished, he relinquished his hold, looked at her, and flung himself down with his head on the table sobbing loudly.
Augusta had died two days before. The next morning he went with his mother down to the shoemaker's house to take some flowers; awestruck, and with his eyes red with crying. Fru Rendalen chose to enter by the door at the side of the house: she wished to go in by the back way. And thus Nils Hansen saw her from the workshop, and came out at once.
Tomas was a little behind. It affected him so much to go in by the old well-known way, that he could not come forward directly. When Nils Hansen observed him, Augusta's playfellow and greatest friend, he burst into violent weeping and left them. It was just the same with Fru Hansen. She was in the large room, occupied with the dead. Her second girl, two years younger than Augusta, was sitting on the floor beside her mother, when Fru Rendalen opened the door and went in.