“Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to another.—­Elizabeth Raklev.”

She folded the paper and fastened it with a pin for want of a wafer, and then quietly opening the door of the room where Madam Beck was sleeping, placed her lips close to her ear, and whispered her name.  Madam Beck woke up in some alarm when she saw Elizabeth standing before her fully dressed, and apparently prepared for a journey.

“Madam Beck,” Elizabeth said, quietly, “I am going to confide something to you, and ask for your advice and assistance.  Your step-son has asked me to be his wife.  It was last Sunday—­and I said yes; but now I have changed my mind, and am going back to my aunt, or farther away still, if you can tell me how; for I am afraid he will follow me.”

Madam Beck stared at her in mute amazement, and at first put on an incredulous and rather scornful expression; but as she came to feel that it might all be true, she raised herself involuntarily higher up in the bed.

“But—­why do you come with this now, particularly in the middle of the night?” she said, with a suspicious and searching look.

“Because he has written to his father about it to-day, and means to tell you and the rest to-morrow.”

“So—­he has already written?  That was his object, then, in bringing you into the house here,” Madam Beck added, after a pause, with some bitterness.

It seemed to strike her then that there was something noble in Elizabeth’s conduct; and looking at her more kindly, she said—­

“Yes, you are right.  It is best for you to go away—­to some place where he will not find it so easy to reach you.”

She lapsed into thought again.  Then a brilliant idea occurred to her, and she got up and put on her clothes.  She had a man’s clearheadedness, and her habits of management stood her in good stead on the present occasion.  The Dutch skipper Garvloit, who had married her half-sister, happened just a day or two before to have been inquiring for a Norwegian girl, who would be able to help in the house; and here was just the place for Elizabeth.  She had only to go on board his vessel, that lay over at Arendal ready to sail.

Madam Beck went into the sitting-room at once, and wrote a letter to Garvloit, which she gave to Elizabeth, together with a good round sum of money—­wages due, she said; and half-an-hour afterwards Elizabeth was rowing over alone in the quiet moonlight night to Arendal.

The smooth sound lay full of shining stars between the deep shadows of the ridges on either side, with a light from a mast here and there denoting the presence of vessels under the land.  A falling star would now and then leave a stream of light behind it; and she felt a sense of joyous exultation that she could only subdue by rowing hard for long spells.  She was like one escaped—­relieved from some oppressive burden.  And how she looked forward to seeing Marie Forstberg now!