She had then made a vow to keep true to him, no matter what her relations might say, and she knew well enough they would all be against her; but as she looked over the sea, she felt herself so strong and so determined, that she could not doubt her courage and her constancy to her first love.
But now, as it so turned out, her constancy was never called in question.

She felt certain that a rumour of her connection with Per must have reached Sandsgaard, for she well knew that there were stories enough about her free and unrestrained life at Bratvold, and so at first she always dreaded the slightest allusion to it.

She had at the same time quite made up her mind to confess openly how matters stood, and to say plainly that although he was nothing but a simple peasant and fisherman, she, Madeleine Garman, would be true to him.

But in the course of conversation she could not discover even the most distant hint at her adventure; it did not even appear that anything really was known about it; her past life was, in fact, never mentioned in any way, and it seemed to be taken for granted that she could never have conducted herself otherwise than naturally became a Miss Garman.

It was this very assumption that seemed to shake her in her resolution.
Everything about Fanny's pretty and artistic house was always kept in the best of order.