Jacob Worse followed her to the door leading into the street, but when she had gone he did not go back to the office, but crossed over the yard to his mother’s.

A month later, Gabriel and Rachel set off under the escort of old Svendsen; Gabriel to Dresden, and Rachel to Paris.  Madeleine also quitted Sandsgaard.  Her intended had arranged, with the assistance of the doctor, that she should go to the baths of Modum, where Martens’s mother, who was the widow of a clergyman from the east coast, was to take care of her.

Uncle Richard was utterly confounded when he heard Madeleine was going to marry a clergyman, and he had a kind of dim feeling that he would have done better to have kept her under the observation of the big telescope.  But the old gentleman, who had never been very strong-minded, had become still more feeble in his sorrow, and now that he could no longer go to Christian Frederick for advice, he gave way in everything.

As for Madeleine herself, the exhaustion which followed her illness had produced a feeling of indifference; and now that the important step had once been taken, she allowed herself to be led without offering any opposition, and did not find it disagreeable, when the pastor took upon himself to think and act for her in everything.  But when it came to saying good-bye to her father she gave way, and was carried senseless to the carriage.

Martens soon found that if he wished to educate Madeleine to be a pattern wife after his own heart, he must get her away from Sandsgaard.  With the same object in view, he sought, and standing as well as he did with those in authority, soon obtained, a living at some distance in the country; and, a year after his betrothal, he celebrated his marriage at his mother’s house.

After his ride along the shore, George Delphin suffered from a dangerous attack of inflammation of the lungs.  His illness lasted so long that a substitute had to be provided for the time in the magistrate’s office; and as soon as he recovered sufficiently to write, he informed the magistrate that he wished to resign his situation.  The magistrate accepted his resignation with alacrity, for George Delphin had never been the kind of man he liked.

During the whole time of the illness, Fanny was in a state of nervous excitement.  To visit the invalid, or put herself in any sort of communication with him, was quite out of the question.  She had thus to content herself with such news as she could pick up, either accidentally or through Morten; but she dared not ask as many questions as she could have wished.  One day when she was standing before the glass, she discovered three small wrinkles at the corner of her left eye.  When she laughed, they improved her; but when she was serious, they made her look old.  Nothing seemed to suit her any longer, not even mourning, in which she had always looked her best.  Fanny, in fact, suffered as much as she was capable of suffering, and one day she received a note from him, in which he said adieu.