"'Ah! Flor,' he said, 'it was just the thing to make me sick of the so-called proper matches. I half suspect my father to have taken me there on purpose to warn me from the daughters of the country, and make me feel the value of my liberty; he knows how I hate the thoughts of going to Stockholm, where they want to send me with the Legation. I had so far rather stay at home among my woods, and only be a sportsman, or a farmer. And you, Flor, you faithful soul, you would never bid me go. But when I just hinted at my wishes, treating them as a sort of romantic whim, I saw at once that by staying I should lose the last remnant of my father's good opinion; and indeed I have no occasion'--he said, with a faltering in his voice, that made my heart ache terribly--'I have no occasion to put his affection to too hard a test. After all, Flor, one has but one father, in this world.'" "Poor boy, it was the first time he ever shewed how much it grieved him to be so little loved. "'My darling Count Ernest,' I said; 'you know how I wish you all your heart desires; but to live here in this solitude, at your age, one had needs be wonderfully happy, or desperately wretched.' "'And which was your case, Flor?' he asked. "'I was happy,' I said; 'for I had a dear little master to bring up, who never for a moment let me feel that I was not his own mother, but only a penniless servant-girl.' "He took my hand, and said; 'Right, you dear old woman! but if to live here, one must needs have everything one wishes, or nothing, why should I despair of having everything?'" "I held my tongue, for I did not dare to begin first to speak of what he might be thinking needful to his happiness. He guessed what I was thinking of, for he said: "'To be sure, even if the greatest of all gifts were within my reach, who knows whether I should be allowed to take it? Curious, how men contradict themselves! There is my father now, who never goes to court, because, he says, the nobility of to-day has nothing thorough-bred about it, if it be not in the stables. Yet how would he look, if I were to go and propose giving him a daughter who was only a blameless girl, who had been his servant? But I am talking nonsense. It is not likely that I shall be tempted to make such a proposal.'" "'The safest way not to be tempted, is to go abroad;' I said, at last, as he sat silent and discouraged. 'For, my dear Count Ernest, if Mamsell Gabrielle appears to have no eyes for her young master, I am certain it is only because she is a servant girl, and knows what she is about. It would be a thousand pities for the poor child, if she were to suffer her heart to escape her through her eyes, for there would be no recalling it. I know her well: she has a brave spirit of her own; if she were to say:--"I will do this, if I were to die for it,"--she _would_ do it and die, without a word.'