“I am afraid I can not follow you unless you tell me a little more definitely. To whom did you make this promise? To any one known to your brother and sister?”
“Yes, they both know her; we knew her in Norway, and she was to have married Frithiof; but when he came over to England he found her just going to be married to some one else. I think it was that which changed him so very much; but perhaps it was partly because at the same time we lost all our money.”
“Do your brother and sister still meet this lady?”
“Oh, no; they never see her now, and never speak of her; Sigrid is so very angry with her because she did not treat Frithiof well. But I can’t help loving her still, she is so very beautiful; and I think, perhaps, she is very sorry that she was so unkind to Frithiof.”
“How did you come across her again?” asked Charles Osmond.
“Quite accidentally in the street, as I came home from school,” said Swanhild. “She asked me so many questions and seemed so sorry to know that we were so very poor, and when she asked me to do this thing for her I only thought how kind she was, and I did it, and promised that I would never tell.”
“She had no right to make you promise that, for probably your brother would not care for you still to know her, and certainly would not wish to be under any obligation to her.”
“No; that was the reason why it was all to be a secret,” said Swanhild. “And I never quite understood that it was wrong till the other day, when I was reading the newspaper about her, and Frithiof found me and was so very angry, and threw the paper in the fire.”
“How did the lady’s name happen to be in the paper?”
“Sigrid said it was because she had broken her promise to her husband; it was written in very big letters—‘The Romiaux Divorce Case,’” said Swanhild.