He swung round. Ah! there they were⁠—making their way straight towards them⁠—the portly figure of Mr. Torp, with Gerda leaning lightly on his arm!

He did not hesitate a moment, but leaping up from his chair with an incoherent apology to his companion, he advanced to meet them, his heart beating fast, but his brain in full command of the situation.

Gerda flushed crimson when she saw him, disengaged her arm from her father’s, and, coming to meet him with charming impetuosity, held out her hand.

She was dressed in plain navy-blue serge, and wore a dark, soft hat low down over her fair hair. This unassuming attire heightened her beauty; and the embarrassed, yet illuminated look with which she greeted her lover, brought back to his mind so vividly the events of yesterday, that for a moment he was struck with a kind of dizziness that reduced everyone in that crowded tent to a floating and eddying mist.