Neither spoke for a moment or two.  Then Fru Beck asked in a low voice—­

“How is your aunt, Elizabeth?”

It was a natural question to ask under the circumstances, but it was felt by both to be only a preliminary breaking of the ice; she had, besides, sent a messenger that morning already to make inquiries.

“Thank you, Fru Beck, she is improving,” Elizabeth replied.  “She is asleep now, and that will do her good.”

“It is a long time since we saw each other—­nearly eighteen years,” said Fru Beck, and her eyes dwelt upon Elizabeth as if to find what traces time had left upon her.  “But you have kept strong, I see—­stronger than I have.”

“It was that morning I left for Holland,” said Elizabeth, seeming to recall it with a certain pleasure.

“I have often thought of that time,” whispered Fru Beck, more to herself almost than to the person she was talking to.  Her lip trembled slightly, and Elizabeth read an expression of mute sorrow in her face.  She was on the point of telling Elizabeth that she knew the reason of her going; but after debating for a moment within herself whether she should or not, finally let it pass.

“Ah! if we could only see into the future, Elizabeth!” she exclaimed with a sigh, and looked sadly at her, as if she thought she had given expression to a feeling that must be common to them both.

“It is better as it is, Fru Beck.  Many things happen in life that would not be so easy to bear if we were cast down beforehand.”

“Yes; but one could guard one’s self,” whispered Fru Beck, with a certain bitterness and hardness in her voice.

Elizabeth made no reply, and there was a pause, which seemed to Fru Beck to have broken the thread of the conversation.  She deliberated how she should take it up again so as to get at what she wanted to say, and taking Elizabeth’s hand with sudden warmth, she said—­

“If there is anything your aunt wants, you know, I hope, that she has only to send to me.”  She would rather have made Elizabeth herself the object of her interest instead of her aunt, but felt that there was much in the relations in which they had stood to one another to make that impossible; but her meaning was just as clear.

“And for yourself, Elizabeth?” she went on, looking searchingly into her eyes, with an expression of deep sympathy.  “All is not right with you:  I am afraid your marriage has not been a happy one.”

These last words brought a sudden flush into Elizabeth’s face, and she involuntarily withdrew her hand.

She looked at Fru Beck with an expression of wounded pride, as if it was a subject she declined to discuss.

“That is not the case, Fru Beck,” she replied.  “I am”—­she was going to say “happily,” but preferred to say—­“not unhappily married.”  She felt that that sounded rather weak, and added—­

“I have never loved, never wished for, any one but him who is now my husband.”