"Roseline, (cried he, striking his clenched fist on the table, and looking with the wildness of a maniac,) dare not presume to cherish, or to avow, a dislike which will not only plunge a dagger into your mother's heart, but rob you of a father. What business can a girl of your age have to like or dislike but as your parents shall direct?--Give them up for ever, or accept the Baron!--How will you reconcile yourself to become an alien to your family?--how relish spending your days in a nunnery, instead of enjoying liberty and every pleasure in the gay sunshine of a court, glittering with diamonds, surrounded by admirers, equal in rank and superior in fortune to many of our most ancient nobility?--Consider well before you determine. To enable you to conquer your diffidence, or caprice, on month I will give you;--one month I will allow to the struggles of maiden bashfulness, or the wayward humour of your sex. Yet hear at once my final resolution. If, during that period, you either alarm or disgust the Baron by your folly or ignorance, so as to make him repent the noble overtures he had made to secure an alliance with my family,--or if you attempt to damp the ardour of his passion by your coldness,--if at the end of that period you do not, without any visible reluctance, accept him as a lover, and promise to give him your hand, I will instantly send you into a convent of the severest order, and compel you to take the veil." Roseline, overpowered by his manner, fell on the floor in a state of insensibility.--Her father now saw he had gone too far; he was alarmed; but, much as he felt himself distressed, he too well knew what he was about, to call for assistance; he therefore, by the usual methods, endeavoured to recover her as well as he could, and, as soon as he saw her revive, soothed her hurried spirits with every fond attention, addressed her by the tenderest appellations, and begged her to have pity on him and on herself.