"You know, Britta," continued Thelma gently, "I shall be Philip's wife, and I must not vex him in any little thing. But I do not quite understand. I have always dressed in the same way,--and he has never said that he thought me wrongly clothed."
And she looked down with quite a touching pathos at her straight, white woolen gown, and smoothed its folds doubtfully. The impulsive Britta sprang to her side and kissed her with girlish and unaffected enthusiasm.
"My dear, my dear! You are more lovely and sweet than anybody in the world!" she cried. "And I am sure Sir Philip thinks so too!"
A beautiful roseate flush suffused Thelma's cheeks, and she smiled.
"Yes, I know he does!" she replied softly. "And, after all, it does not matter what one wears."
Britta was meditating,--she looked lovingly at her mistress's rippling wealth of hair.
"Diamonds!" she murmured to herself in a sort of satisfied soliloquy. "Diamonds, like those you have on your finger, Fröken,--diamonds all scattered among your curls like dew-drops! And white satin, all shining, shining!--people would take you for an angel!"
Thelma laughed merrily. "Britta, Britta! You are talking such nonsense! Nobody dresses so grandly except queens in fairy-tales."
"Do they not?" and the wise Britta looked more profound than ever. "Well, we shall see, dear Fröken--we shall see!"
"We?" queried Thelma with surprised emphasis.
Her little maid blushed vividly, and looked down demurely, twisting and untwisting the string of her apron.
"Yes, Fröken," she said in a low tone. "I have asked Sir Philip to let me go with you when you leave Norway."
"Britta!" Thelma's astonishment was too great for more than this exclamation.
"Oh, my dear! don't be angry with me!" implored Britta, with sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, and excited tongue all pleading eloquently together, "I should die here without you! I told the bonde so; I did, indeed I And then I went to Sir Philip--he is such a grand gentleman,--so proud and yet so kind,--and I asked him to let me still be your servant. I said I knew all great ladies had a maid, and if I was not clever enough I could learn, and--and--" here Britta began to sob, "I said I did not want any wages--only to live in a little corner of the same house where you were,--to sew for you, and see you, and hear your voice sometimes--" Here the poor little maiden broke down altogether and hid her face in her apron crying bitterly.