Now, mother knows how to make use of her words: it is unfortunate that she is not at home to-night; how pleased she would have been to see the Herr Baron! Yes, what I would say is, she so twisted her words about, that Eva confessed to her why she wished to leave home.

You see the girl is petty; and the young gallant gentlemen of Copenhagen had remarked her smooth face,--and not alone the young, but the old ones also! So an old gentleman--I could easily name him, but that has nothing to do with the affair--a very distinguished man in the city, who has, besides, a wife and children, had said all sorts of things to her parents; and, as eight hundred dollars is a deal of money to poor people, one can excuse them: but Eva wept, and said she would rather spring into the castle-ditch.

They represented all sorts of things to the poor girl; she heard of the service out here with us.

She wept, kissed my old woman's hand, and thus came to us; and since then we have had a deal of service from Eva, and joy also!" Some minutes after Eva stepped in, Otto's eye rested with a melancholy expression upon the beautiful form: never had he before so gazed upon a woman.

Her countenance was extraordinarily fine, her nose and forehead nobly formed, the eyebrows dark, and in the dark-blue eyes lay something pensive, yet happy: one might employ the Homeric expression, "smiling through tears," to describe this look.