The next day, before he was quite awake, the postman brought him the warrant for a post-office order for fifteen thousand francs.  He thought that there must be a mistake in the name, or else that it was a commission that had been entrusted to him.  No! it was from the French manufacturer whose working expenses he had reduced so greatly.  He permitted himself, he wrote, to send this as a modest honorarium.  He had not been able to do so sooner, but now hoped that it would not end there.  He awaited Rafael’s acknowledgment with great anxiety, as he was not sure of his address.

Rafael was up and dressed in a trice.  He told his news to every one, ran down to his mother and up again; but he had not been a moment alone before the superabundance of happiness and sense of victory frightened him.  Now there must be an end of all this, now he would go home.  He had not had the slightest prickings of conscience, the slightest longings, until now; all at once they were uncontrollable.  She stood upon the hilltop, pure and noble.  It became agonising.  He must go at once, or it would drive him mad.  This anxiety was made less acute by the sight of his mother’s sincere pleasure.  She came up to him when she heard that he had shut himself into his room.  They had a really comfortable talk together—­finally about the state of their finances.  They lived in the pension because they could no longer afford to live in an hotel.  The estate would bring nothing in until the timber once more became profitable, and her capital was no longer intact—­ notwithstanding the prohibition.  Now she was ready to let him arrange about the cement company.  On this he went out into the town, where his court soon gathered round him.

But the large sum of money which was required could not be raised in a day, so the affair dragged on.  He grew impatient, he must and would go; and finally his mother induced her cousin, the Government Secretary, to form the company, and they prepared to leave.  They paid farewell visits to some of their friends, and sent cards and messages of thanks to the rest.  Everything was ready, the very day had come, when Rafael, before he was up, received a letter from the Dean.

An anonymous letter from Christiania, he wrote, had drawn his attention to Rafael’s manner of life there, and he had in consequence obtained further information, the result being that he was, that day, sending his daughter abroad.  There was nothing more in the letter.  But Rafael could guess what had passed between father and daughter.

He dressed himself and rushed down to his mother.  His indignation against the rascally creatures who had ruined his and Helene’s future—­“Who could it have been?”—­was equalled by his despair.  She was the only one he cared for; all the others might go to the deuce.  He felt angry, too, that the Dean, or any one else, should have dared to treat him in this way, to dismiss him like a servant, not to speak to him, not to put him in a position to speak for himself.