A few hours later she drove to the real early mass. She drove in a closed carriage, but she let down the window to look at the stars; it is possible too that she, as of old, was looking for her knight.
And there he was; he sprang forward to the window of the carriage. He sat his prancing charger magnificently. His scarlet cloak fluttered in the wind. His pale face was stern, but beautiful.
“Will you be mine?” he whispered.
She was transported in her old heart by the lofty figure with the waving plumes. She forgot that she needed to live a year yet.
“I am ready,” she whispered.
“Then I will come and fetch you in a week at your father’s house.”
He bent down and kissed her, and then he vanished; she began to shiver and tremble under Death’s kiss.
A little later Mamsell Fredrika sat in the church, in the same place where she had sat as a child. Here she forgot both the knight and the ghosts, and sat smiling in quiet delight at the thought of the revelation of the glory of God.
But either she was tired because she had not slept the whole night, or the warmth and the closeness and the smell of the candles had a soporific effect on her as on many another.