"He! Gottlieb! Has he dared to fall in love!"
"Certainly."
"Impossible!"
"But I assure you that it is true, and if you will ask him why he so frequently visits the valley, he certainly will not deny that he goes there for the purpose of meeting handsome Nanna, the daughter of old Mr. Lonner. He reads poetry to her, and under the pretence of teaching her the guitar, he finds an opportunity of pressing her pretty little white hands."
"If that is true. If he, while he remains under my roof, enters into such a miserable intrigue, I will—for I consider it my duty as occupying the place of his mother—I will to-morrow morning mar his plans. But how did you learn this?"
This was a question which Mr. Fabian could not truthfully answer, for if he should do so, he would have been obliged to state that he, after his disagreeable parting with Magde, had taken a roundabout path towards Almvik, which conducted him so near the valley that he discovered two persons sitting beneath the tree near the fountain, and that from that day forward he had closely watched Gottlieb's movements, so that he might be enabled to hold a weapon over the one who might perhaps be a spy upon his own actions.
It was therefore an accident which opened Mr. Fabian's eyes to Gottlieb's crime; but he had not wished to play the part of an accuser, O, no, for such love affairs were common to all young men, at least he thus assured his wife.
"Make no excuse for him, sir," interrupted Mistress Ulrica sharply, "this indeed is excellent, and will become still richer if not prevented in time. The reproaches of a mother on the one hand, and the curses of a father on the other; a seduced girl, perhaps something worse; a criminal investigation, and a scandal in which our house, and possibly ourselves, will figure largely; all this we must expect. As true as my name is Ulrique Eugenie, this matter shall have an end, and a speedy end, too."
"But how will you accomplish that?" inquired Fabian.
"That I shall attend to myself. Gottlieb has said that he should like to travel over the mountains into Norway. Now then he can go to Amal, and from thence he may commence his journey. He shall have money, but must obey me."