"Yes; it will be this evening," he said, and his face wore a most peculiar expression, as if some struggle was going on within him.
At last he began: "I have had time to see more of Elsa than usual, and when she was with young companions. There is something about her as if her pleasure were the most important thing to everybody, and she rather thought nobody was quite equal to herself."
It is possible that these peculiarities had become Elsa's by inheritance, as her father was not without his own tendencies in that direction—a fact of which he was naturally unconscious.
He went on: "You have been a good girl, Karin, and I am pleased with you. Elsa needs now some one who has a right to take her more steadily in hand."
There was a pause, and the tears sprang to Karin's eyes. Was she to be dismissed, when she felt almost as much at home in her master's house as his daughter herself?
"Yes, you have been a good girl, Karin, and you deserve your reward. You never ought to leave my home. What Elsa needs, though, is a mother's care. She needs one who with a mother's name will have a strong right to her respect and her affection."
He paused a moment. Karin, not knowing what else to do, dropped a courtesy, and waited for him to go on. He got up, blushed, took a few steps on the piazza, and then turned and said abruptly: "I am going to be married, and I want you to tell Elsa about it. Tell her that it is the lady whom the children called 'aunty' there in the country—their mother's sister. She is willing to marry me. I never thought to get such a good wife." And Possessionaten Bilberg looked humble, for perhaps the first time in his life.
"She is not like me in many things," he continued, as if pleased with his subject. "She is pious—something I don't quite understand, but it makes me sure she will be a good mother to Elsa. I really believe she would hardly have taken me if she had not longed to get my child under her care," said Possessionaten, with another unwonted attack of humility. "Please tell Elsa at once," he said, and sat down again, to indicate that the interview was over.
In a few moments Elsa came flying along the piazza, and surprised her father by taking a seat on his knee and putting her arms round his neck. "Papa! papa!" she said, "how could you think of doing anything that would please me so much?"
"Your own mother loved her, Elsa, and so I am sure she is the right kind of a woman, and that you will be happy together."