Hearing thus suddenly
of the _bonde's_ death, she was strangely affected--she could almost
have wept. She felt perfectly convinced that Svensen had made away with
his master's body by some mysterious rite connected with pagan
belief,--she knew that Gueldmar himself, according to rumor, had buried
his own wife in some unknown spot, with strange and weird ceremonials,
but she was inclined to be tolerant,--and glancing at Svensen's grave,
pained face from time to time as she sat beside him in the sledge, she
resolved to ask him no more questions on the subject, but to accept and
support, if necessary, the theory he had so emphatically set
forth,--namely, the mystical evanishment of the corpse by some
supernatural agency.
As they neared their destination, she began to think of Thelma, the
beautiful, proud girl whom she remembered best as standing on a little
green-tufted hillock with a cluster of pansies in her hand, and
Sigurd--Sigurd clinging fondly to her white skirts, with a wealth of
passionate devotion in his upturned, melancholy, blue eyes.
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