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.

"What!" cried the old man with the greatest impatience, "are you
raving, master? To a man who has sold and flung away his paternal
inheritance, the most precious pictures? Not though you were worth a
million, should a man so void of feeling ever obtain her! Ay, then
indeed, after my death, perhaps even in my lifetime, my treasures would
be brought to a fine market: there would the pictures go flying to all
the four corners of the world, that I should not rest in my grave. He
is politic, however, my pretty gentleman. First properly opens my
heart, brings me with noble magnanimity an old bond of his father's,
which he is ready to pay me, tickles me into emotion, that I may become
still more magnanimous, still more generous and heroic, and throw my
daughter into his arms. No, no, my young sir, you have not won the game
so easily with me. The debt is discharged; I find no traces of it in my
books, and even, as I said before, if there were, I will even assist
you, as I promised, by word and deed, with friendship and money, as
much as you can reason