At this unexpected mention of his own name, the Baron started back, but immediately recovering himself, he spoke in as reverential a tone as he could manage to find for the occasion. “Since thou knowest who I am, good {120}dame,” said he, “mine errand is very likely also known to thee. I want my beloved daughter, who has disappeared from the convent at Reading, and can nowhere be found. If thou canst find her for me and restore her to mine arms, I will grudge thee no reward that my castle can give.” At these words a low sigh proceeded from the interior of the cottage, as if the offer of a bribe had given pain to its virtuous inmate, or the Baron’s request had been of an unexpected and afflicting character. However, after a few moments’ pause, the same voice again spoke:-- “Whi’st on this earth we live and move, Some sweetness in our lives is found; But what more sweet than children’s love, Our very heart-strings twined around? Yet to each parent comes an hour (Though fain he would the same delay) When other and resistless power Will steal the youthful heart away. And when a father here inquires For daughter lost; then, let him learn That daughters, though they love their sires, To other loves some day will turn; Nor convent rules nor home’s own charms, Will keep them from a lover’s arms.” As the voice uttered these strange and not altogether consoling words, the Baron stroked his beard, pulled his moustache, and racked his brains in the vain endeavour to bring to mind any lover with whom it was at all likely that his daughter should have eloped. The idea of her eloping at all was unpleasant; but those were strange times, and he knew well enough that such things had happened before, and would not improbably happen {121}again. The puzzle to him was as to the happy-individual upon whom Mathilde could possibly have placed her affections. He thought of all their acquaintances, turning over in his mind the circumstances under which his child had met them, and, one after the other, he rejected the possibility of any one of them being the favoured individual. There was Baron Eau-de-vie, who lived within calling distance, but his habits of intemperance put him at once out of the question; then the lord of Burnham was a worthy man, but being past eighty, and totally blind, was scarcely likely to have become the object of a maiden’s affection; these and various others he thought over, and remained musing for a short time before he spoke again.