'She is a good brave girl,' said I, 'and pretty, too.'
'She calls you Hugh, and you call her Helga--Helga! a very noble, stirring name--quite like the blast of a trumpet, with something Biblical about it, too, though I do not know that it occurs in Holy Writ. Pray forgive me. This familiar interchange of names suggests that there may be more between you than exactly meets the eye, as the poet observes.'
'No!' I answered with a laugh that was made short by surprise. 'If you mean to ask whether we are sweethearts, my answer is--No. We met for the first time on the twenty-first of this month, and since then our experiences have been of a sort to forbid any kind of emotion short of a profound desire to get home.'
'Home!' said he. 'But her home is in Denmark?'
'Her father, as he lay dying, asked me to take charge of her, and see her safe to Kolding, where I believe she has friends,' I answered, not choosing to hint at the little half-matured programme for her that was in my mind.
'She is an orphan,' said he; 'but she has friends, you say?'
'I believe so,' I answered, scarcely yet able to guess at the man's meaning.
'You have known her since the twenty-first,' he exclaimed: 'to-day is the thirty-first--just ten days. Well, in that time a shrewd young gentleman like you will have observed much of her character. I may take it,' said he, peering as closely into my face as our respective positions at the table would suffer, 'that you consider her a thoroughly religious young woman?'
'Why, yes, I should think so,' I answered, not suffering my astonishment to hinder me from being as civil and conciliatory as possible to this man, who, in a sense, was our deliverer, and who, as our host, was treating us with great kindness and courtesy.
'I will not,' said he, 'inquire her disposition. She impresses me as a very sweet young person. Her manners are genteel. She talks with an educated accent, and I should say her lamented father did not stint his purse in training her.'
I looked at him, merely wondering what he would say next.
'It is, at all events, satisfactory to know,' said he, lying back in his chair again, 'that there is nothing between you--outside, I mean, the friendship which the very peculiar circumstances under which you met would naturally excite.' He lay silent awhile, smiling. 'May I take it,' said he, 'that she has been left penniless?'