"Your father is going to bring you a new lover this evening, and poor Adolphus will be forgotten."
"You deserve it for all your ridiculous suspicions: but you are my cousin, and I forgive you this once." She looked at him with so sunny a smile, and so clear and open-hearted a countenance, that it was impossible to entertain a doubt.
"You love me really, then?" he said—"truly—faithfully?"
"I have told you so a hundred times," replied his cousin. "I am astonished you are not tired of hearing the same thing over and over again."
"'Tis so sweet, so new a thing for me," said Adolphus, "and I could listen to it for ever."
"Well, then, we love each other—that's very clear," said Christina, with the solemnity of the foreman of a jury delivering a verdict on the clearest evidence; "but since my father won't let us marry, we must wait—that is almost as clear as the other."
"And if he never consents?" enquired Adolphus.
"Never!" exclaimed Christina, to whom such an idea seemed never to have occurred, "can it be possible he will never consent?"
"I fear it is too possible," replied Adolphus, and the shadow fell on his face again.
"Well," said Christina, after a minute's pause, as if she had come to a resolution, "we must always stay as we are. Happiness is never increased by an act of disobedience."