Page:Undset - Jenny (1921).djvu/103

 only to get away from home, I am sure, and have a place of her own. I wonder mother could be so delighted to get her married, considering the cat-and-dog life she herself has led with my father. But there was no end of a fuss about the Rev. Arnesen, when my sister got engaged to him. I can't stand my brother-in-law, neither can father, I believe, but mother!…

"My fiancée—I was engaged once, you know—her name was Catherine, but she was always called Titti. I saw she had that name put into the papers, too, when her marriage was announced.

"It was a stupid thing altogether. It was three years ago. She was giving some lessons in the school where I was teaching. She was not a bit pretty, but she flirted with everybody, and no woman had ever taken any notice of me—which you can easily understand, when you think of me as I was here at first. She always laughed at everything—she was only nineteen. Heaven knows why she took to me.

"I was jealous, and it amused her. The more jealous she made me, the more in love was I. I suppose it was less love than male vanity, having a sweetheart very much in demand. I was very young then. I wanted her to be exclusively taken up with me—a very difficult proposition as I was then. I have often wondered what she wanted me for.

"My people wanted our engagement to be kept secret, because we were so young. Titti wanted it made public, and when I reproached her for being too much interested in other men, she said she could not spend all her time with me, as our engagement was a secret.

"I took her home, but she could not get on with my mother. They always quarrelled, and Titti simply hated her. I suppose it would have made no difference to mother if I had been engaged to somebody else; the fact that I was going to marry was enough to put her against any woman. Well—Titti broke it off."