Chapter 9 - Page 2

heart would break.

She had been trusted one afternoon, shortly after, to bring in the
tea-tray, on which, without thinking what she was doing, she had placed
the chafing-dish with the boiling teakettle. It fell as she was carrying
it in; but although its hot side and the boiling water burnt and scalded
her arm and hand, she carried the tray quite quietly out again without
allowing a muscle of her face to change--she was not going to be
corrected before him again.

Madam Beck herself bound up her hand in the kitchen, where she stood
white with pain; while Carl, who had been sitting on the sofa, and had
seen how the whole thing happened, forgetting his self-command, had
jumped up in great excitement, and had shown such uncommon sympathy that
his sister Mina, afterwards, when they were alone in the room together,
said, with a look that was more searching than the joking words seemed
to require, "It is not possible you are fond of the girl, Carl?"

"No fear, Mina," he answered quickly, in the same tone, chucking her
under the chin as he spoke. "There are as handsome girls as her in
Arendal; but you can see as well as I can that she is a girl in a
hundred. That business with the tea-tray is what very few others would
have been capable of; and we mustn't forget that if it had not been for
her--"

"Oh yes," rejoined Mina, with a toss of her head, a little tired of the
eternal repetition of this stock observation. "She didn't know all the
same that it was papa who was out there."

It was a game of hypocrisy, thought out with no inconsiderable subtlety,
that the handsome lieutenant was carrying on in this matter: under his
apparently so entirely frank sailor-bearing there was hidden a real
diplomatist. By trumpeting about the town the service which Elizabeth
had rendered them in saving the Juno, he had, one may say, forced his
family to take her up, though to them he made it appear that public
opinion left them no alternative. On the other hand, he was uncommonly
cautious in his attitude towards Elizabeth herself; for he knew he must
win her without attracting the attention of his stepmother and sisters.
He believed he had made a sort of impression upon her; but at the same
time he felt that he had a wild swan to deal with, that might at any
moment spread its wings and fly away--there was such a strong,
independent individuality about her.

In his home, however, she had become a different creature, scarcely to
be recognised as the same Elizabeth,--so quietly did she go about,
hardly conscious of his presence apparently--and so slavishly did she
follow the directions of the mistress of the house. This new aspect of
her had put him in doubt