"Indeed!" replied Christina, feeling her eyes filling with tears, but endeavouring at the same time to conceal her emotion under an affectation of anger, "your opinion of me is not very flattering; and it is not in very good taste, methinks, to play the despairing lover, especially after the conversation you so honourably overheard." "Dry that tear, dear girl!" said Adolphus, "I will believe any thing you like." "Why do you make me cry then? Is it only to have the pleasure of telling me to dry my tears? Or did you think you had some rival; some splendid cavalier that it was impossible to resist--Count Ericson, for instance?" "Oh! as to Ericson I am not at all uneasy. I know you hate him; and besides he is not much richer than myself; but, dear Christina"---- "Well--go on," said the girl, mocking the lugubrious tone of her cousin--"what are you sighing again for?" "Your father is going to bring you a new lover this evening, and poor Adolphus will be forgotten." "You deserve it for all your ridiculous suspicions: but you are my cousin, and I forgive you this once." She looked at him with so sunny a smile, and so clear and open-hearted a countenance, that it was impossible to entertain a doubt. "You love me really, then?" he said--"truly--faithfully?" "I have told you so a hundred times," replied his cousin. "I am astonished you are not tired of hearing the same thing over and over again." "'Tis so sweet, so new a thing for me," said Adolphus, "and I could listen to it for ever." "Well, then, we love each other--that's very clear," said Christina, with the solemnity of the foreman of a jury delivering a verdict on the clearest evidence; "but since my father won't let us marry, we must wait--that is almost as clear as the other." "And if he never consents?" enquired Adolphus. "Never!" exclaimed Christina, to whom such an idea seemed never to have occurred, "can it be possible he will _never_ consent?" "I fear it is too possible," replied Adolphus, and the shadow fell on his face again. "Well," said Christina, after a minute's pause, as if she had come to a resolution, "we must always stay as we are. Happiness is never increased by an act of disobedience." "I think as you do," said the young soldier, admiring her all the more for the death-blow to his hopes; "and are you happy, quite happy, Christina?" "What a question! Don't I see you every day? Isn't every body kind to me? Is there any thing I want?" A different answer would have pleased the lover more. He looked at her for some time in silence--at last, in an altered tone, he said-- "I congratulate you on your prudence, Christina." "I cannot break my father's heart." "No, but mine, Christina!" "Adolphus," said the young beauty solemnly, "if I cannot be your wife with the consent of my father, I never will marry another. This is all you can ask; all I can promise."