And the dog jumped again, and was fed with sugar, while his mistress began to think that Walter allowed himself to be waited for too long. Suddenly she sprang up. The sound of a horse's hoofs was audible, and in an instant Walter turned into the avenue of oaks that led to where she was sitting. Fidèle ran towards him, and leaped beside the horse barking his welcome, while Adela, in sudden and unexpected confusion, which she strove to hide behind an affectation of indifference, fixed her eyes upon the surface of the lake beyond the rider. "Well," she said, when Walter, having tied his horse to a tree, stood beside her, "I have only just arrived. I nearly forgot our appointment." "I should have been so sorry not to find you," he said, "for after our offensive and defensive alliance it would have pained me to leave Eichhof without telling you myself of what you will be sure to hear from others, coloured, probably, by their prejudices." "Leave? You are going away? Where? You have only just come!" the girl exclaimed, evidently alarmed, and quite forgetting her part of indifference, as she drew Fidèle towards her and put her arms around his neck, as if craving some sympathy from him, while she looked up at Walter anxiously. "You perhaps remember a ride we took together, about a year ago, when I told you how hard I had found it to resign the idea of studying medicine," Walter began. "Good heavens, Walter," she interrupted him, "you are not going to begin about that again?" He gazed at her seriously and sadly for a moment in silence, and noted the eager and yet terrified expression in her eyes. "But I am," he then said, softly. "I am firmly, unalterably resolved----" "Walter!" she exclaimed loudly, thrusting Fidèle from her. "You cannot! you dare not! Think of your father!" "I have thought of him and tried to do as he wished. But do you not think that my father loved me and earnestly desired my happiness?" "Yes; and for that very reason you ought to do nothing that he would have disapproved." "And suppose I am perfectly convinced that I never could be contented, but, on the contrary, should be positively miserable, in the career he chose for me?" "You still ought to pursue that career." "And live but half a life, tormented by the consciousness that I was entirely unfitted for my position? No, Adela, my father never could have wished me to do this. When I told him of my wishes I had not yet made an attempt to conform to his. This was my duty, and I have done it. Now what I only suspected has come to be a certainty. I have no interest whatever in the study of the law. I cannot make it the business of my life. Do you not believe that the knowledge of this would alter my father's views?" "Your father never would have allowed you to be a doctor."