She had a hard and heavy time of it during the two days until Carl returned; and the nights were passed in fever.
On Saturday evening he came, and the first he greeted was herself: he seemed almost, as she passed in and out of the room quiet and pale, as if he didn't wish any longer to conceal the relations now existing between them.
He had with him a letter from his father, which was read aloud when the meal was over. It was dated from a South American port, and mention was made in it of Salvé among others. Off Cape Hatteras they had had stormy weather, and had their topmast carried away. It remained attached by a couple of ropes, and with the heavy sea that was running, was swinging backwards and forwards, as it hung, against the lower rigging, threatening to destroy it. Salvé Kristiansen had come forward in the emergency and ventured aloft to cut it adrift; and as he sat there the whole had gone over the side. He fell with it, but had the luck to be caught in a top-lift as he fell, and so saved his life. "It was pluckily done," ended the account, "but nevertheless all is not exactly right about him, and he is not turning out as well as he promised."
"I never expected very much from him," remarked Carl, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders; "he's a bad lot."
He didn't see the resentful eyes which Elizabeth fixed upon him for these words, and she sat for a long while afterwards out in the kitchen with her hands in her lap, silent and angry, thinking over them. A resolution was forming in her mind.
Before they retired to rest, Carl whispered to her—
"I have written to my father to-day, and—to-morrow, Elizabeth, is our betrothal-day!"
Elizabeth was the last in the room, putting it to rights, and when she left she took a sheet of paper and writing materials with her. She lay down on her bed; but about midnight she was sitting up by a light and disfiguring a sheet of paper with writing. It was to this effect:—
"Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to another.—Elizabeth Raklev."
She folded the paper and fastened it with a pin for want of a wafer, and then quietly opening the door of the room where Madam Beck was sleeping, placed her lips close to her ear, and whispered her name. Madam Beck woke up in some alarm when she saw Elizabeth standing before her fully dressed, and apparently prepared for a journey.