She sat down and remained silent; her calm face bore no sign of the agitation which orators betray after their least fervid improvisations.
Wilfrid bent toward Monsieur Becker and said in a low voice, “Who taught her that?”
“I do not know,” he answered.
“He was gentler on the Falberg,” Minna whispered to herself.
Seraphita passed her hand across her eyes and then she said, smiling:—
“You are very thoughtful to-night, gentlemen. You treat Minna and me as though we were men to whom you must talk politics or commerce; whereas we are young girls, and you ought to tell us tales while you drink your tea. That is what we do, Monsieur Wilfrid, in our long Norwegian evenings. Come, dear pastor, tell me some Saga that I have not heard,—that of Frithiof, the chronicle that you believe and have so often promised me. Tell us the story of the peasant lad who owned the ship that talked and had a soul. Come! I dream of the frigate Ellida, the fairy with the sails young girls should navigate!”
“Since we have returned to the regions of Jarvis,” said Wilfrid, whose eyes were fastened on Seraphita as those of a robber, lurking in the darkness, fasten on the spot where he knows the jewels lie, “tell me why you do not marry?”
“You are all born widows and widowers,” she replied; “but my marriage was arranged at my birth. I am betrothed.”
“To whom?” they cried.
“Ask not my secret,” she said; “I will promise, if our father permits it, to invite you to these mysterious nuptials.”