"Since you call that cruel, you certainly must admit that I was perfectly right not to mention to you the profession at which you jeer, but which I consider the noblest that can be embraced."
The gravity with which he spoke made some impression upon Adela. She looked at him almost timidly, and said, shyly, "Were you really in earnest, then, about being a doctor?"
"I have found it very hard to relinquish the idea,--for the present at least. But why should we speak of all this? Rather let us admire the exquisite beauty of the afternoon, and of the woods and trees. Shall we canter?"
Strangely enough, Adela instantly forgot all her vexation and her determination to be revenged upon Walter. She saw that he refused her his confidence, and, instead of being angry that this was so, she became very sad.
"You are very fond of that Doctor Nordstedt of whom you were telling me awhile ago, are you not?" she asked, suddenly reining in her mare after a long canter.
Walter turned and looked her full in the face. "I thought you had forgotten all that," he said. "I certainly thought that my comrade had grown to be altogether too much of a fine lady, too much taken up with dressing and visiting, to feel any interest in what I could tell her."
Adela blushed. Certainly she did very much desire to be a fine lady, but she could not give up her comrade. She replied, "Well, and what now, when you find that in spite of dressing and visiting I still have time to think of Dr. Nordstedt?"
"Now I tell you that I certainly honour and love him, and that I am proud to consider myself his friend."
"It is his fault, then, that you want to be a doctor?"
"On the contrary, it is he who is always pointing out to me all the difficulties of the profession."