"'You wish to speak to me. I hope that you know me well enough to be certain that if there is any service I can do for you I shall be delighted!'
"'It is more than an ordinary service,' I answered. 'I wish to take from you your greatest treasure, and consequently you must excuse my embarrassment in asking. I love your daughter, and would beg her from you.'
"'Young ass! Now he has once started he talks like a book bound in morocco with gilt edges,' was his thought. His words--'You have taken me greatly by surprise, Mr. Sydney. I have always looked upon my daughter as a child, and it would be quite impossible for me to think of allowing her at present to be disturbed by any question of marriage. Hers is a sweet and delicate nature, influenced as yet but by the dreams of childhood. I trust that nothing you have said to her can possibly have ruffled the calm of innocence.'
"At this point I should have been placed in a position of difficulty had not his thoughts continued--
"'I would stake twenty to one the young cub has been sitting spooning for the last half-hour. I wonder how he will try to get out of it.'
"I did not, therefore, try at all, but quietly told him the fact, ignoring, however, the details. His anger was so well assumed, that whilst it lasted his thoughts almost followed his words, or else the latter so upset me that I missed the accompanying reflections.
"'It was, he said, a most unpardonable action thus to take advantage of an innocent child who, he felt quite certain, had not even realized the very meaning of the situation, etc., etc.'
"At last he cooled down a little, and when this happened, his thoughts and words became mixed up in my mind somewhat in the following manner. 'You must realize, Mr. Sydney, that in speaking to you in this manner, I am actuated by no unfriendly feeling--it would be unwise to go too far--Personally from what I have seen of you, there are few young men whom I could welcome more cordially into my family--If only I were certain that he possessed a safe five thousand a year--But she is too young, and I am quite sure that you will agree with me when you think it over in a calmer mood, that it would be unfair to bind my daughter to an engagement before she is fairly out of the nursery--That ought to smooth him down and keep up the romance at the same time. I must have a good talk with Vera and see what is best to be done. I feel certain that I shall have indigestion to-night. It always upsets me having to think and bother about things after dinner.'
"I eventually agreed not to see Vera for a week, and at the end of that time I was to be granted another interview with her father for the purpose of arriving at some plan for the future.
"My feelings were of a mixed character as I walked away from the house over the crisp, frozen ground. I felt excited, but neither satisfied nor happy. I had tasted the sweets of love, and a little of the acidity of disenchantment. I began to meditate somewhat after this fashion. How lovely she looked with that expression on her face as I knelt down by her side and took her hands in mine. 'Is it possible that the physiognomists are correct when they tell us that the eye never changes, and that the eyelids alone work those miracles of varying expression; that a few slight wrinkles can convey such a world of meaning, and have often the power to change the destiny of thousands? Is it not more probable that some subtle influence passes from eye to eye that no scientist can detect, owing to the fact that as yet science confines its observations only to those influences which are discernible by animal sense organs? But, whatever the cause, the fact is most remarkable, and one must needs have loved to realize the full significance of its power.' However, I did not, after all, feel satisfied that I had awakened quite the same feeling in Vera as that which I myself experienced, and I began to think of another partially developed power which Descartes attributes to this sixth sense, and to which I have not hitherto referred.