Lorimer skillfully avoided betraying the fact that they had watched her through the window, and had listened to her singing. And Thelma heard all the explanations patiently till Bosekop was mentioned, and then her fair face grew cold and stern.
"From whom did you hear of us there?" she inquired. "We do not mix with the people,--why should they speak of us?"
"The truth is," interposed Errington, resting his eyes with a sense of deep delight on the beautiful rounded figure and lovely features that were turned towards him, "I heard of you first through my pilot--one Valdemar Svensen."
"Ha, ha!" cried old Güldmar with some excitement, "there is a fellow who cannot hold his tongue! What have I said to thee, child? A bachelor is no better than a gossiping old woman. He that is always alone must talk, if it be only to woods and waves. It is the married men who know best how excellent it is to keep silence!"
They all laughed, though Thelma's eyes had a way of looking pensive even when she smiled.
"You would not blame poor Svensen because he is alone, father?" she said. "Is he not to be pitied? Surely it is a cruel fate to have none to love in all the wide world. Nothing can be more cruel!"
Güldmar surveyed her humorously. "Hear her!" he said. "She talks as if she knew all about such things; and if ever a child was ignorant of sorrow, surely it is my Thelma! Every flower and bird in the place loves her. Yes; I have thought sometimes the very sea loves her. It must; she is so much upon it. And as for her old father"--he laughed a little, though a suspicious moisture softened his keen eyes--"why, he doesn't love her at all. Ask her! She knows it."
Thelma rose quickly and kissed him. How deliciously those sweet lips pouted, thought Errington, and what an unreasonable and extraordinary grudge he seemed to bear towards the venerable bonde for accepting that kiss with so little apparent emotion!
"Hush, father!" she said. "These friends can see too plainly how much you spoil me. Tell me,"--and she turned with a sudden pretty imperiousness to Lorimer, who started at her voice as a racehorse starts at its rider's touch,--"what person in Bosekop spoke of us?"
Lorimer was rather at a loss, inasmuch as no one in the small town had actually spoken of them, and Mr. Dyceworthy's remarks concerning those who were "ejected with good reason from respectable society," might not, after all, have applied to the Güldmar family. Indeed, it now seemed an absurd and improbable supposition. Therefore he replied cautiously-"The Reverend Mr. Dyceworthy, I think, has some knowledge of you. Is he not a friend of yours?"