"I had never seen a Lagerlöf nor heard of either you or your father before I met you in a dream. Ask Maja Persdotter standing there beside you if she hasn't heard me describe your father many, many times."
He went up close to her. "If only I dared believe this!" He walked round the room and back to her.… "Why—then you were the one my dear father meant for me, and not"
What Mamselle Lisa Maja replied the old housekeeper never heard, for she saw 'twas time for her to be going.
The young lovers sat talking together till far into the night, and—well—that autumn they were married.
Mamselle Lisa Maja afterwards told the old housekeeper it was only his morbid conscience that had stood in the way. He had felt he would be wronging the dead sweetheart, and he had brooded over his brother Elof, and thought he had no right to happiness when the brother was so unhappy—and all on account of him.
But in her dream he had found something to hold to, something to be guided by, which gave him the courage to do what he wished above everything.
From the day of his marriage he was a changed man, though during the first years the old despondency came over him at times; but later he was as tranquil and even-tempered as could be. A year after the wedding at Mårbacka his brother was drowned, and then for a while it was pretty hard; but that, too, passed over.
The old mistress and he were married six-and-forty
