"And your--and the prince?"
"I asked him to take a walk."
"Raise my head a little!--that's it! Now give me both your hands!"
The patient paused a few moments, and then he spoke with great clearness and decision, so that it was evident he had long contemplated what he was about to say and turned it over in his enfeebled mind.
"My dear child! It is a good thing to be rich, when he who is rich has also a good heart; but I believe it is very rare to find the two together, or to see them stay together. And to be clever is also a good thing, but without a good heart it is worth little.
"Look here, dear child! Your mother and I--we have lived together eighteen years, and, next to God, I have loved and honored your mother more than all things. I think she has taken pains to love me back again, and I do not blame her if she has not succeeded. No, not her, only myself. I ought to have taken a wife who was more suitable to my age and to my ways; but I was vain and proud, and I wanted a handsome, stately, and clever wife, such as the world admires, and your mother was handsome, stately, and clever; far too pretty and too clever for me, an insignificant, simple man, who never was made for the great world. I felt it, therefore, all the time in my heart that I was not the man to make your mother happy; but she never let me know it distinctly until quite recently."
The old man bowed his gray head sadly, and repeated:
"Quite recently--when she wanted you to marry your cousin Felix, and I could not say Yes! and amen! to it--then I saw very clearly that we thought and felt in the most important and most sacred things so very differently; and whether I was right or she, that does not matter now; but, my dear child, it is a bad thing when those who ought to love each other cannot do it--a bad thing, my dear child, which may easily break a heart!"
And as the old man spoke these words the tears were rolling down his pale, wrinkled cheeks.
Helen sat there, silent and pale. Her hands trembled. Her father's words had apparently touched her to the heart.