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76 it, it sounded very earnest to her who was the object and sympathetic listener.

"Yes; but what then?" at last asked Ingeborg, with a soft smile and not withdrawing the hand that Bagger had seized. "The proper meaning of what you have told me is that your troth is plighted to another, unknown lady."

"No: that is n't the proper meaning—"

"But yet it is a fact. At the moment when you stand at the altar with one, another can step forward and claim you."

"Oh, that kind of a claim! A piece of paper without signature, sent away in the air! In law it has no validity at all, and morally it has no power, when I love another as I love you, Ingeborg!"

"That I am not sure of. It appears to me there is something painful in not being faithful to one's youth and its promises, and in the consciousness of having deceived another."

"You say this so earnestly, Ingeborg, that you make me desperate. I confess that there is something . . . something I would wish otherwise . . . but for Heaven's sake, make it not so earnest!"

As Ingeborg knew so well about it, she could not regard the matter as earnestly as her words denoted; but for another reason she had suddenly conceived or felt an earnestness. It would not do to have a husband with so much