“Why _should_ you fancy her here?” asked Metzerott, interpreting the sigh aright. “She doesn’t suit you, and that’s all there is about it. Rise into her world indeed! I hope your father is an honest man, which is more than can be said of hers!” “Oh! if you come to fathers!” said Louis proudly. “But there’s more in it than that, if I could only make you see it. I’ve been brought up in both worlds, father, and I know. Ours—yes, we are working for each other at ‘Prices,’ while in hers they work for themselves; that makes us higher; yet in some ways they are higher than us.” “They’ve more money,” said his father scornfully, “and finer clothes”— “Not Mrs. Richards,” said Louis; “but it’s in things money won’t buy that I see the difference. I can’t put it into words, but you would understand it, father, if you could see Mrs. Richards standing beside—Aunt Sally, for instance. They are equally good, perhaps, and I love them equally well, so it’s a good example. It’s not Pinkie’s fault, father, it’s just because hers is a different world.” “Was she so unkind to you to-day?” “Far from it,” said the boy, a deep flush rising to his fair brow; “but her father—I think because of me—will take her to Paris, and put her into a convent-school. I only saw her a little while, for he took her for a drive, and to supper at his hotel; but—she loves me, father.” “Does she?” said Karl Metzerott. “But I dare say she does. Poor girl, poor girl.” He was too wise to say any more. Louis was, he saw, fully alive to the situation, and comment would only wound without helping him. But he was inwardly relieved at the escape from this trouble promised by the Parisian school, which would, he persuaded himself, effectually put an end to the whole affair. They were only children, and would be in love half a dozen times apiece before they were married. Yet—Louis was his own son,—his who had “loved one woman only,” and clave to her in death as in life. And how dared Henry Randolph scorn his boy, his noble, beautiful Louis, worth a hundred little gypsies, such as the one on whom he had set his young heart? With these mixed and contradictory emotions struggling in his bosom, Karl Metzerott stood for some moments with folded arms, looking down upon his son. Suddenly he laid one large, rough, toil-worn hand very softly upon the bowed head. “Don’t break thy heart for her, Louis,” he said; “there’s not a woman in the world—_now_—worth that.” “Ah! _now_,” said Louis. “Was there ever, father?” “Never,” replied the shoemaker sturdily. “Did I break my heart for thy mother—yet if ever woman _were_ worth—but I lived on, and not quite for nothing, _nicht wahr_?” “You had me,” said Louis, springing to his feet, and clasping like a child his father’s brown neck; “you had me, and I have you. We won’t break our hearts while we have each other, father.” CHAPTER VI. “AN ENEMY CAME AND SOWED TARES.”