All wouldn't do--the milestone took no notice--Christina at last grew angry, and could contain herself no longer. "I dreamt of you last night," she said by way of a beginning. "I hope in future you will leave my sleep undisturbed by your presumptuous presence. It is bad enough to be forced to see you when one is awake." "And I, also, had a dream," replied Ericson, starting from his reverie, confused and only having heard the first part of the somewhat fierce attack. "I dreamt that you looked at me with a smile, a long, long look, so sweet, so winning. It was a happy dream!" "It was a false one," she said, with tremendous bitterness. "I know better where to direct my smiles, whether I am awake or asleep." "And how did I appear to you?" asked the Count, presenting a splendid specimen in his astonished look of the state of mind called "the dumfoundered" by some learned philosophers, and by others "the flabbergasted." "You appeared to me like the nightmare! frightful and unsupportable as you do to me now," was the answer, accompanied with the look and manner that showed she was a judge of nightmares, and thought him a very unfavourable specimen of the animal. "Ill-natured little tyrant!" cried Ericson, rushing to her, "teach me how you would have me love you, and I will do everything you ask!" In a moment he had seized her in his arms, and imprinted a kiss of prodigious violence on her cheek, which was redder than fire with rage and surprise! But the assault did not go unpunished. The might of Samson woke in that insulted bosom, and lent such incredible weight to the blow that fell on the aggressor's ear, that it took him a long time to believe that the thump proceeded from the beautiful little hand he had so often admired; or, in short, from any thing but a twenty-four pounder. He rubbed the wounded organ with astonishing assiduity for some time. At last he said, in a very calm and measured voice, "Your father has deceived me, young lady. He led me to believe you did not receive my visits with indifference." "My father knows nothing about things of that kind," replied Christina, still flaming with indignation, "or he never would have let such an ill-mannered monster into his house. But he was right in saying I did not receive your visits with indifference; your visits, Count Ericson, can never be indifferent to me, and"---- What more she would have said, it is impossible to discover, for she was interrupted by the sudden entrance of her cousin, who only heard her last words, and started back at what he considered so open a declaration of her attachment. "Who are you, sir?" asked Ericson in an angry tone, and with such an assumption of superiority, that Christina's hand tingled to give him a mark of regard on his other ear.