"I should have been so sorry not to find you," he said, "for after our offensive and defensive alliance it would have pained me to leave Eichhof without telling you myself of what you will be sure to hear from others, coloured, probably, by their prejudices."
"Leave? You are going away? Where? You have only just come!" the girl exclaimed, evidently alarmed, and quite forgetting her part of indifference, as she drew Fidèle towards her and put her arms around his neck, as if craving some sympathy from him, while she looked up at Walter anxiously.
"You perhaps remember a ride we took together, about a year ago, when I told you how hard I had found it to resign the idea of studying medicine," Walter began.
"Good heavens, Walter," she interrupted him, "you are not going to begin about that again?"
He gazed at her seriously and sadly for a moment in silence, and noted the eager and yet terrified expression in her eyes.
"But I am," he then said, softly. "I am firmly, unalterably resolved----"
"Walter!" she exclaimed loudly, thrusting Fidèle from her. "You cannot! you dare not! Think of your father!"
"I have thought of him and tried to do as he wished. But do you not think that my father loved me and earnestly desired my happiness?"
"Yes; and for that very reason you ought to do nothing that he would have disapproved."
"And suppose I am perfectly convinced that I never could be contented, but, on the contrary, should be positively miserable, in the career he chose for me?"