“God knows,” said Lavrans sternly, “I judge no man to be a greater sinner before Him than I am myself. But ’tis no just reckoning that I should give away my daughter to any man that pleases to ask for her, only because we all need God’s forgiveness.”
“You know I meant it not so,” said Kristin hotly. “Father—mother—you have been young yourselves—have you not your youth so much in mind that you know ’tis hard to keep oneself from the sin that comes of love—?”
Lavrans grew red as blood:
“No,” he said curtly.
“Then you know not what you do,” cried Kristin wildly, “if you part Erlend Nikulaussön and me.”
Lavrans sat himself down again on the bench.
“You are but seventeen, Kristin,” he began again. “It may be so that you and he—that you have come to be more dear to each other than I thought could be. But he is not so young a man but he should have known—had he been a good man, he had never come near a young, unripe child like you with words of love—That you were promised to another, seemed to him, mayhap, but a small thing.
“But I wed not my daughter to a man who has two children by another’s wedded wife. You know that he has children?”
“You are too young to understand that such a wrong breeds enmity in a kindred—and hatred without end. The man cannot desert his own offspring, and he cannot do them right—hardly will he find a way to bring his son forth among good folk, or to get his daughter married with any but a serving-man or a cottar. They were not flesh and blood, those children, if they hated not you and your children with a deadly hate—
“See you not, Kristin—such sins as these—it may be that God may forgive such sins more easily than many others—but they lay waste a kindred in such wise that it can never be made whole again. I thought of Björn and Aashild too—there stood this Munan, her son; he was blazing with gold; he sits in the Council of the King’s Counsellors; they hold their mother’s heritage, he and his brothers; and he hath not come once to greet his mother in her poverty in all these years. Aye, and ’twas this man your lover had chosen to be his spokesman.