"Love," cried Edward, "happiness, and eternal truth. Believe me, dearest girl, I feel as if I had waked from a stifling dream. The happiness, which lay so close at my feet, which my affectionate father designed for me, as he stood by thy cradle, I spurned from me like a rude boy, to make myself contemptible to the world and to myself. Hast thou then forgiven me, gentle being? Canst thou then love me?" "I wish thee well from my very heart, my old playmate," said Sophia: "but for all that, we are not happy yet." "What can there be still in our way?" cried Edward. "Oh! how deeply am I ashamed, to have been capable of mistaking so grossly your generous father! How kindly he meets my wishes! How cordially he presses me to his bosom as his son!" "Ay, thou strange creature," said Sophia, laughing, "but his caresses were not meant so. But the man will never reflect as long as he lives, and immediately begins to reckon without his host! Of what you are talking of, papa, however kind he may be, will not consent to hear a syllable. Besides, we must first become better acquainted with each other. These are things, my friend, which may linger on for years to come. And in the mean time you perhaps may shift about again, and then in your jovial company laugh over my sorrow and my tears." "No," cried Edward, and threw himself at her feet, "do not think harshly of me; be as good and kind as thy eye bespeaks thee! And I feel it, thy father will rejoice in our happiness, and bless our union!" He embraced her passionately, without observing that her father had returned, and was standing behind him. "What is that, young gentleman?" cried the old man angrily: "bless your union? No, drive away, banish from his house, that will he, the loose companion who would thus abuse his confidence and partiality." Edward had risen and looked him earnestly in the face. "You do not mean to give me your daughter for my wife?" he asked in a quiet tone.