“Van Deg,” she answered sorrowfully.
“Do you love him, Elzia?”
“How can you ask?”
“Will you marry him?”
“My father’s happiness is dearer to me than my own. Think you I would wantonly sacrifice it?”
“But why van Deg?”
“Because he excels in my father’s art.”
“Alas!” cried the despairing lover, “why am I not a painter?”
The bed of Quentin was one of thorns that night, as he threw himself upon it and yielded to his agony of thought. How vainly, yet how ardently had he loved, how industriously had he laboured to procure her affection. Just when he had achieved the victory over her confiding heart, all that he struggled for was lost—no, not lost—he could bear the thoughts of her death, he could weep over her grave, he could care for the flowers above it, but to think that the prize must be torn from him to be given to another’s embrace, there was madness in it. And then van Deg, that rough, haughty, distant man! how unworthy he to possess a jewel of such value, how unfit to care for such a tender plant, how unsuitable his unsocial spirit for the angel who needed some congenial soul to insure her happiness.
“Will she not droop and die in that cold atmosphere with him?” he asked himself, as at length exhausted nature yielded to weariness and he fell asleep.