The Lady sat by the fireplace playing with the two children. Now and then she stole keen glances at Kristin, as she went about and set the supper-board. Thin she was truly, and still in her bearing. She had ever been still, but it was a stillness of another kind that was on the girl now. Lady Aashild guessed at all the straining and the stubborn defiance that lay behind.
“’Tis like you have heard,” said Kristin, coming over to her, “what befell here this last autumn.”
“Aye—that my sister’s son has made suit for you.”
“Mind you,” asked Kristin, “how you said once he and I would match well together? Only that he was too rich and great of kin for me?”
“I hear that Lavrans is of another mind,” said the lady drily.
There was a gleam in Kristin’s eyes, and she smiled a little. She will do, no question, thought Lady Aashild. Little as she liked it, she must hearken to Erlend, and give the helping hand he had asked.
Kristin made ready her parents’ bed for the guest, and Lady Aashild asked that the girl should sleep with her. After they had lain down and the house was silent, Lady Aashild brought forth her errand.
She grew strangely heavy at heart as she saw that this child seemed to think not at all on the sorrow she would bring on her father and mother. Yet I lived with Baard for more than twenty years in sorrow and torment, she thought. Well, maybe ’tis so with all of us. It seemed Kristin had not even seen how Ulvhild had fallen away this autumn—’tis little like, thought Aashild, that she will see her little sister any more. But she said naught of this—the longer Kristin could hold to this mood of wild and reckless gladness, the better would it be, no doubt.
Kristin rose up in the dark, and gathered together her ornaments in a little box which she took with her into the bed. Then Lady Aashild could not keep herself from saying: