Katrine shunned the festivities in
which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and
reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of
settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy. But
scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek,
it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most
entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the
larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with
pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle
and unfortunate Katrine. Careless as she was with regard to public
opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old
associates, and before long she came to know the cause. A cruel
suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender
point. It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had
refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schoenfeld's. The story reached
the ears of Rauchen, at last. With a fierce energy, such as he had
never exhibited before, he tracked it from cottage to cottage, until he
came to Schoenfeld's housekeeper, who refused to give her authority. The
next market-day Rauchen encountered the former suitor and publicly
charged him with the slander, in such terms as his baseness deserved.
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