But anyhow, she can tell you something different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have been away, gadding about, God knows where, in the world.

It's true enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of the lieutenant.

It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law." A wild gleam of joy broke over Salve's features for a moment, but they relapsed almost immediately into gloom.
"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then ?" he asked.
"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a hair's-breadth from the truth.

"She allowed herself to be betrayed into saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have him.

She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said 'no' to you." "So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically.