"Oh! Cornelius," I exclaimed, with much emotion, "though you should like another ever so much, and me ever so little, I shall never be so naughty again. Ah! if you knew how miserable I felt last night when I saw you looking so ill!"
"And came and laid your head on my knee like a faithful spaniel—yes, child, I know you like me."
He said it with some bitterness. I replied warmly—
"Indeed I do, Cornelius, and always shall, even though you should not care for me at all."
"Would you?" he answered, his thoughts evidently elsewhere.
"Why, how could I help it?" I asked, astonished at the question.
He started like one whose secret thought has received some sudden sting.
"Ay," he said, "one cannot help it; to wish to leave off, and wish in vain; there is the torment, there is the misery."
"But I don't wish to leave off," I exclaimed, almost indignantly, and clinging to him, I added, a little passionately perhaps, "I could not if I would, and if I could I would not, Cornelius."
There was a pause; as I looked at him, something like a question debated and solved seemed to pass across his face. Then he pressed me to his heart with some emotion, as he said, rather feverishly—