at
we offer."

"By the soul of William Tell! should the unknown peasant dare--But he is a
brave boy, and twice has he done the last service to my race! I love him,
Adelheid, little less than thyself; and we will win him ever to our
purpose gently, and by degrees. A maiden of thy beauty and years to say
nothing of thy other qualities, thy name the lands of Willading, and the
rights of Berne are matters, after all, not to me lightly refused by a
nameless soldier who hath naught--"

"But his courage, his virtues, his modesty, and his excellent sense,
father!"

"Thou wilt not let me have the naked satisfaction of vaunting my own
wares! I see Gaetano Grimaldi making signs at his window, as if he were
about to come forth: go thou to thy chamber, that I may discourse of this
troublesome matter with that excellent friend; in good season thou shalt
know the result."

Adelheid kissed the hand that she held in her own, and left him with a
thoughtful air. As she descended from the terrace, it was not with the
same elastic step as she had come up half an hour before.

Early deprived of her mother, this strong-minded but delicate girl had
long been accustomed to make her father a confidant of all her hopes,
thoughts, and pictures of the future. Owing to her peculiar circumstances,
she would have had less hesitation than is usual to her sex in avowing to
her parent any of her attachments; but a dread that the declaration might
conduce to his unhappiness, without in any manner favoring her own cause,
had hitherto kept her silent. Her acquaintance with Sigismund had been
long and intimate. Rooted esteem and deep respect lay at the bottom of her
sentiments, which were, however, so lively as to have chased the rose from
her cheek in the endeavor to forget them, and to have led her sensitive
father to apprehend that she was suffering under that premature decay
which had already robbed him of his other children. There was in truth no
serious ground for this apprehension, so natural to one in the place of
the Baron de Willading; for, until thought, and reflection paled her
cheek, a more blooming maiden than Adelheid, or one that united more
perfect health with feminine delicacy, did not dwell among her native
mountains. She had quietly consented to the Italian journey, in the
expectation that it might serve to divert her mind from brooding over what
she had long considered hopeless, and with the natural desire to see lands
so celebrate