Laura was just twenty years old. The particular kind of egoism that comes from bad nerves was completely alien to her. She blossomed out under kisses, which had not yet become the serious business of life. It was her season of roses. All the good elements in her nature had their great opportunity. Would this soft mellow rose-perfume penetrate to the core of her being? Where there is a fund of health there are always possibilities. Things had never looked so promising.
Laura had taken it into her head that they would take a flat in town. The idea was constantly in her mind. What supreme comfort it would be to live amongst restaurants, shops and theatres with plenty of pin money! She begged and implored Herman, but on this point he was really immovable. He felt it would be treason to his dead father to leave Ekbacken. And lo! Laura yielded like a good child. She even liked him because he knew his own mind.
She also gave in on another point. She had dreamed that they would start on their great wedding trip at once. But Herman, who had a dispute, concerning shore rights, with the town to attend to, had to wait till the spring, when the matter would be regulated. He had to defend his dead father’s old Ekbacken. He seemed to gather strength from the mourning band on his sleeve.
If only that strength had survived a little longer.... The wedding day came nearer and nearer.
Stellan came home from the summer manœuvres, brought his heels together with a slight click of his spurs and greeted his pretty sister with ironical politeness. He had grown into a witty and elegant young officer. The uniform was exactly the right mask for his easy cynicism and light irony. Now he kissed Laura’s hand.
“So you’re going to get married,” he said, “and you’re sticking to your old lake. What an idyl, my dear Laura.”
Laura snatched her hand away shyly. She somehow could not answer with a smile. Stellan made quite another impression on her than the others at Selambshof. He was the real brother of the old, naughty Laura. Her love was in some way afraid of him. Yes, she was also afraid on Herman’s account. Quite instinctively Laura did all she could to avoid Stellan during the next days, though it was he who had undertaken all the arrangements for the wedding.
Now the morning of the wedding had arrived. Laura came for the last time out of the room in which she had slept as a little girl. She left it without regrets. Selambshof had never been a home. She remembered how lonely she had been these last days. Nobody had sat by her bedside the last night and talked late in whispers far into the night. She was not afraid. One could not be afraid of Herman. No, but she had been lying in her bed longing to have at least a little letter from a school friend to read.
As Laura walked down the passage she suddenly heard Stellan’s voice in the smoking room. It must have been Peter he was talking to, because the replies sounded like coarse mutterings. She was just stealing past the door to find Hedvig, for today she felt a strange aversion to meeting her brothers alone. But then something made her stop and listen. She heard her own name and Herman’s pronounced. “Laura ... she ... will be able to twist the poor boy round her little finger....”
It was Stellan’s voice—curiously penetrating—like drinking iced water. Then she heard Peter mumble in a thick voice, expressive at one and the same time of satisfaction and discontent: