She sits in the great carriage and dreams. She is not driving up Broby hill to a poor little pastorage. She is on her way to the cool leafy arbor down in the park, where her lover is waiting. She sees him; he is young, he can kiss, he can love. Now, when she knows that she soon shall meet him his image rises before her with singular clearness. He is so handsome, so handsome! He can adore, he can burn, he fills her whole being with rapture.
Now she is sallow, withered, and old. Perhaps he will not recognize her with her sixty years, but she has not come to be seen, but to see, to see the beloved of her youth, who has gone through life untouched by time, who is ever young, beautiful, glowing.
She has come from so far away that she has not heard a word of the Broby clergyman.
The coach clatters up the hill, and at the summit the pastorage is visible.
“For the love of God,” whines a beggar at the wayside, “a copper for a poor man!”
The noble lady gives him a piece of silver and asks where the Broby pastorage is.
“The pastorage is in front of you,” he says, “but the clergyman is not at home, there is no one at the pastorage.”
The little lady seems to fade away. The cool arbor vanishes, her lover is not there. How could she expect, after forty years, to find him there?
What had the gracious lady to do at the vicarage?