Among the Becks’ most frequent visitors out there was postmaster Forstberg’s family, which included, besides the parents, a hobbledehoy son and their daughter Marie, a fair-haired girl some eighteen years of age, of quiet manners, and with an uncommonly clever face.  Nobody said that she was pretty, but nearly every one who knew her had the impression that she was; and there was a certain indefinable harmony and grace, not only about her perhaps rather small figure, but about everything she did.  But if she was not considered pretty, it was agreed on all sides that she had great sense; and among her friends she was always the one they elected to confide in, whenever they had anything on their minds.  That she never confided anything to them in return had, curiously enough, never struck them; and for that matter, she was too correct and proper, they imagined, to have any heart affairs herself.  She was a confidential friend of Carl Beck’s sisters, and especially of Mina, who declared that she put her before all the rest of her acquaintance, and thought in her own heart that she was exactly the match for her brother.

The only one of the young girls in the circle with whom Carl Beck had had no youthful acquaintance was Marie Forstberg; and it had been some time before he discovered that the quiet girl was worth talking to.  He used to be secretly annoyed then that the conversation when she was present should lapse so easily into empty trifling; her mind was so clear and true, and she had such a beautiful smile for whatever she approved.  Before her, therefore, he always displayed now the broad, manly side of his character—­which he could do with so much grace—­and the coquetry which was at the bottom of this was not without its effect.  She had always made rather a hero of him in her own mind, and he had created the flattering impression now that the light and flirting manner which he adopted towards young ladies, and which had rather qualified her admiration of him, had been due to his not having before found among them any one that was worthy of a man’s serious attention.  He had begun consequently to occupy a much larger share of her thoughts than she would herself have been willing to acknowledge; and many of the confidences of which she was the recipient at this time would, if her friends had had a little more penetration, have been brought last of all to her.

Marie Forstberg’s attention had very soon been attracted to Elizabeth; and knowing her history, she tried very often to help her, and put her in the right way of doing things.  At first she found her rather short and unapproachable, and could get nothing but “yes” or “no” from her; and there was something almost offensive in the brusque way in which she would turn with an impatient flush from her mentor when she sometimes didn’t understand what was meant, and would do the thing in her own way.  She wouldn’t see at first the various little good turns which the other did her in her quiet, considerate