“Ugh! the ugly little wretch.”
“But he is so good, so wise, for so young a man. And he is your devoted slave.”
“Then I wish my slave would obey his owner’s orders, and keep out of her sight.”
“Sybil, you are incorrigible,” sighed the old man, but he did not yield his main point.
One after another he proposed for her consideration all the eligible young bachelors of the neighborhood, who, he knew, were ready upon the slightest encouragement to renew their once rejected suits for the hand of the beauty and heiress.
But one after another Sybil, with some sarcastic word, dismissed.
“Sybil, you are a strange, wayward girl! It seems to me that for any man to love you is to take a sure road to your hatred! And yet, oh, my dear! I wish to see you safely married. Is there not one among those whom you might prefer to all the rest?”
“No, my father, not one whom I could endure for an instant as a lover.”
“And oh! when I feel this fatal rising of the heart and fulness of the head—this Wave of Death that is sure to bear me off sooner or later to the Ocean of Eternity—Oh, then, my Sybil, how my soul travails for you!” groaned the old man.