Aagot. Dear, darling aunt, listen to me!
Leonarda. Go away to him! Away with you!
Aagot. Have you looked at him, aunt? Have you seen how handsome he is?
Leonarda. Handsome? He!
Aagot. No, not a bit handsome, of course! Really, you are going too far!
Leonarda. To me he is the man who made a laughingstock of me in a censorious little town by calling me "a woman of doubtful reputation." And one day he presents himself here as my adopted daughter's lover, and you expect me to think him handsome! You ungrateful child!
Aagot. Aunt!
Leonarda. I have sacrificed eight years of my life—eight years—in this little hole, stinting myself in every possible way; and you, for whom I have done this, are hardly grown up before you fly into the arms of a man who has covered me with shame. And I am supposed to put up with it as something quite natural!—and to say nothing except that I think he is handsome! I—I won't look at you! Go away!
Aagot (in tears). Don't you suppose I have said all that to myself, a thousand times? That was why I didn't write. I have been most dreadfully distressed to know what to do.
Leonarda. At the very first hint of such a thing you might to have taken refuge here—with me—if you had had a scrap of loyalty in you.