"He looks to me like the champagne we drank at dinner. The first drops tasted very good; but when the glass had been standing a little while, I found the wine quite flat and tasteless.--But you do not really intend me for Cousin Felix?" asked Miss Helen, very eagerly, as the thought suddenly flashed through her mind.
"Oh, no, by no means--unless you choose; I mean--we shall never force your will in this respect," replied the old baron, rather confused, as he dared not tell the whole truth, and yet did not choose to state an untruth.
Helen made no reply; but the thought she had awakened was actively at work in her mind. She compared the conversation she had had the day before with her mother with her father's words just now.... It required much less ingenuity than she possessed to discern the connection between many casual remarks and the two interviews. Her proud heart rebelled at the thought that her fate had been decided and her hand disposed of without consulting her wishes, and asking her own opinion; that this Felix, against whom her chaste heart was instinctively rising in arms, might already look upon her as his own! These thoughts occupied her mind so fully that she could not fall in with the loud admiration of the company, as they stepped out of the forest upon the bluff near the shore.
And yet it was a sight well worthy of enthusiastic admiration. The sun had just sunk into the ocean, and seemed to draw down with it the clouds shining brilliantly in a variety of gold and crimson hues. From the point where it had set bright streaks of light were shooting up in all directions, piercing the clouds, and losing themselves high up in the deep blue ether. The sea was like a mass of fire near the horizon, and golden sparks came dancing towards the shore on the crests of the waves. The chalk cliffs, with their colossal clefts, and the beech-trees crowning them, flamed up in the red evening light as in a blaze. All around was solemn stillness, broken only by the dash of the waves below upon the shingle, and now and then the shrill cry of a gull fluttering restlessly over the waters.
The company stood about in groups, lost in admiration of the glorious sight, which changed every moment Oswald, tired of the continuous Ahs and Ohs, in which especially the baroness and Felix vied with each other, had gone aside from the others and seated himself upon the exposed root of an immense beech-tree.
"Have you room for me there?" asked Helen, coming up to him.
"I pray you will take my seat," said Oswald, starting up.
"Only for a moment; I do not know why, but the walk has tired me more than usually."
"Perhaps you stayed too long in the garden this morning?"
"No, but à propos. how does it happen that I have not seen you to-day--nor yesterday?"