At these words Gösta Berling had stolen away to a beautiful dark-haired girl who sat at the big table.
“You were much at Borg five years ago, Anna,” he says. “Do you know if it was the major’s wife who told Ebba Dohna that I was a dismissed priest?”
“Help her, Gösta!” is the girl’s only answer.
“You must know that I will first hear if she has made me a murderer.”
“Oh, Gösta, what a thought! Help her, Gösta!”
“You won’t answer, I see. Then Sintram told the truth.” And Gösta goes back to the other pensioners. He does not lift a finger to help the major’s wife.
Oh, if only she had not put the pensioners at a separate table off there in the corner by the stove! Now the thoughts of the night awake in their minds, and a rage burns in their faces which is not less than the major’s own.
In pitiless hardness they stand, unmoved by her prayers.
Did not everything they saw confirm the events of the night?
“One can see that she did not get her contract renewed,” murmurs one.