"Hoity, toity! Why thou dost talk just as they do in those silly romances. I wager thy head is full of them. Thou hast had bad teachers, child, to permit thee to fill thy poor little brain with such trash instead of useful knowledge. Or is it," said he, fixing his gray eyes searchingly upon her, "or is it that thou hast met some sighing Adonis in the woods? Ha! thou dost blush—have a care, child. There, thou needest not tremble, I will not seek to know thy secret, if secret thou hast. This much, however, know for a certainty, that Prince Ferdinand is destined to be thy—"
"Dearest uncle!" exclaimed the little lady, her beautiful eyes filling with tears, "thou shalt know all—all I have to tell, if thou wilt but deliver me from this—"
"Have done with this folly, Lady Isoleth," and his cold gray eyes sternly regarded her. "It was thy dead father's will that thou shouldst marry thy cousin, Prince Ferdinand of Bernstorf; and thy father's will must and shall be obeyed."
"'Folly!' 'Lady Isoleth!' 'must and shall!' He never before now spoke one unkind word to me." And the weeping Isoleth went with a breaking heart and shut herself in her own room, alone, and locking herself in, she gave unrestrained vent to her passionate grief.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LAST APPEAL.
"I will seek him—yes, he will not refuse my prayer. I will tell him I hate him. He will be only too glad to release me when he knows the depth of hatred I bear him. I will go this moment, for soon will all my gay cousins be here, and then will be the horrid betrothal ceremony—but I will not think of that—"
"Ha! my shy, beautiful cousin, Lady Isoleth!" Ferdinand was in the library, amusing himself with books and prints. "See here, beautiful cousin, I have found a book of rare merit, and beautifully illuminated. I suppose, though," continued he with a quizzical look, "that all the books here and their manifold contents are familiar to thy bright eyes—is it not so?"
"Not exactly all," replied Isoleth, smiling in spite of her sorrow, as she glanced at the endless rows of huge leather-bound tomes, that had not even had the cobwebs dusted from them for a century at least.
"Wilt thou not deign to look over this precious book with me, most beauteous lady? Thy sharp wit may help my slow faculties to comprehend its quaint poetry, and thy glorious eyes will love its finely executed prints."