Though a specious hypocrite, he was no fool.

He knew the ways of men and women, and he thoroughly realized the present position of affairs.

He was quite aware of Thelma Gueldmar's exceptional beauty,--and he felt pretty certain that no man could look upon her without admiration.

But up to this time, she had been, as it were, secluded from all eyes,--a few haymakers and fishermen were the only persons of the male sex who had ever been within the precincts of Olaf Gueldmar's dwelling, with the exception of himself, Dyceworthy,--who, being armed with a letter of introduction from the actual minister of Bosekop, whose place, he, for the present, filled, had intruded his company frequently and persistently on the _bonde_ and his daughter, though he knew himself to be entirely unwelcome.

He had gathered together as much as he could, all the scraps of information concerning them; how Olaf Gueldmar was credited with having made away with his wife by foul means; how nobody even knew where his wife had come from; how Thelma had been mysteriously educated, and had learned strange things concerning foreign lands, which no one else in the place understood anything about; how she was reputed to be a witch, and was believed to have cast her spells on the unhappy Sigurd, to the destruction of his reason,--and how nobody could tell where Sigurd himself had come from.
All this Mr.Dyceworthy had heard with much interest, and as the sensual part of his nature was always more or less predominant, he had resolved in his own mind that here was a field of action suitable to his abilities.