"But, if I beat you?" she said ominously, holding up one of the fair fingers to which his attention had been so particularly called, and implying by the question, if you get angry when I only refuse your toast, won't you eat me if I am the winner at chess? "But, if I beat you?" she said.
"That will not be the only occasion on which you will have triumphed over me, you—you"——He seemed greatly at a loss for a word, and concluded his speech with—"beauty!" This expression, which was, no doubt, intended for the most complimentary he could find, was accompanied with a look of admiration so long, so broad, and so impudent, that she blushed, and a squeeze of her hand so hard, so rough, and so continued, that she screamed. She threw a glance of inexpressible disdain on the insolent wooer, and looked for protection to her father; but that venerable individual was at that moment so sound asleep on one of the sofas at the other end of the room, that no noise whatever could have awakened him. Ericson seemed totally unmoved by all the contempt she could express in her looks, and probably thought he was in a thriving condition, from the fact (somewhat unusual) of his being looked at at all. She lost her temper altogether. She covered her cheek, which was flushed with anger, with the little hand that was reddened with pain, and resolved to play her worst to spite her ill-mannered antagonist. But all her attempts at bad play were useless. The board shook beneath the immense hands of Ericson, who was in a tremendous state of agitation, and hardly knew the pieces. He pushed then hither and thither—made his knights slide along with the episcopal propriety of bishops, and made his bishops caracole across the squares with the unseemly elasticity of knights. His game got into such confusion, that Christina could not avoid winning, and at last—enjoying the victory she had determined not to win—she cried out, with a voice of triumph, "Check to the king by the queen."
"Cruel girl!" exclaimed the Count, dashing his hand among the pieces with an energy that scattered them all upon the floor. "Haven't you been anxious to make the king your prisoner?"
"But there is nothing to hinder him from saving himself," answered Christina, looking round once more to her father, who, however, pursued his slumber with the utmost assiduity and had apparently a very agreeable dream, for a smile was evident at the corners of his mouth. "It is impossible to place the board as it was," she continued, trying to gather up the pieces, and place castles, knights, and pawns in their proper position again.
"Don't try it—don't try it," cried Ericson, losing all command of himself, and pushing the board away from him, till it spun over with all its men on the carpet. "The game is over—you have given me check, and mated me!" And in a moment, as if ashamed of the influence exercised over him by so very unwarlike an individual as a little girl of eighteen, he hurried from the room, stumbling over his enormous sword, which got, somehow or other, between his legs, and cursing his awkwardness and the absurd excess of admiration which caused it.
"That man will surely never come here again," said Christina to her father, as he entered the room an hour after the incidents of the chess-board; for the obsequious minister had followed Ericson in his rapid retreat, and now returned radiant with joy, as if his guest had been the most fascinating of men.
"Not come here again!" chuckled the father. "That's all you know about it. He is dying with impatience to return, and is angry with himself for having wasted the two precious hours of your society in the way he did. He never had two such happy hours in his life."
"Happy! is that what he calls happiness?" answered Christina, opening her eyes in amazement. "I don't know what his notions may be—but mine——oh, father!" she cried, emboldened by the smile she saw on the old man's countenance, "you are only trying me; say you are only proving my constancy, by persuading me that such a being as that has any wish to please me. He is more in love with Alexander the Great than with me; and he is quite right, for he has a far better chance of a return."
"An enthusiasm excusable, my dear, in a young warrior of twenty years of age, whose savage ambition it will be your delightful task to tame. He is in a terrible state of agitation—a most flattering thing, let me tell you, to a young gipsy like you—and you must humour him a little, and not break out quite so fiercely, you minx; and yet you managed very well, too. A fine fellow, Ericson, though a little wild; rich, powerful, nobly born—what can you wish for better?"
"My cousin," answered Christina, with a bluntness that astonished the advocate of Ericson's claims; "my cousin Adolphus, and no other. He is braver than this savage; and as to nobility, he is as nobly born as my own right honourable papa, and that is high enough for me."