"Can one help such things? He came to me one day as I was sitting up by the Linter. You remember the place, where it makes its first leap."
"I remember it very well."
"So do I. Robert had shown it me as the fairest spot in all Scotland."
"And there this lover of ours sang his song to you?"
"I do not know what he told me then; but I know that I told him that I was engaged; and I felt when I told him so that my engagement was a sorrow to me. And it has been a sorrow from that day to this."
"And the hero, Phineas,—he is still dear to you?"
"Dear to me?"
"Yes. You would have hated me, had he become my husband? And you will hate Madame Goesler when she becomes his wife?"
"Not in the least. I am no dog in the manger. I have even gone so far as almost to wish, at certain moments, that you should accept him."
"And why?"