"'I know all that,' I replied. 'Do you wish me to marry him, papa?'
"'I can't say that I wish you to, my daughter, but if you loved him I should be pleased for you to have such a husband.'
"I was never more surprised in my life. Then he told me a great many things about the baron—how universally he was esteemed, what a position he held in society, how wealthy he was, how honorable and how good. These things I knew before. They certainly had weight with me in favor of the baron: I think they would have had with almost any girl. I asked my father if he had given the baron any encouragement, and he replied that he had left everything between the baron and myself for settlement.
"The next evening the German came again to woo me with my father's sanction. He became very earnest, and I told him that I would not, could not, give him any hope. He asked me if it might ever be otherwise, and I told him I thought not. 'Well,' he said, 'I shall certainly ask you again. I return to Germany in April, and I shall hope to carry home the tidings of my betrothal.'
"It was then late in the winter, and pretty soon we returned to the country, for father liked to be close to Nature when it burst into its new life.
"How nice it seemed to be once more in the old house! I soon found myself interested in my old occupations, and most of all in the care of the conservatory, which was then all abloom with azaleas and other spring-flowering plants. There too was the little widow, as sad as ever, but glad to see me back, and more than ready to resume the old friendship. We had hardly got into our old routine ways before my father announced one morning that the baron Dumbkopf was coming down to say good-bye before leaving for Germany. I knew very well what it all meant, and I began to think that as it was my father's wish that I should marry some time, and that as I could hardly find a husband more suited to his ideas, and that as I probably should never fall in love, I might as well accept him as anybody. Then I began to think of Arthur. Thoughts of the two men crossed and recrossed in my mind, closely woven like the threads in a cloth. I used to go and look at his glove and talk to the little bird-widow about him, and really was quite angry with myself for having him so much in my mind and he so long gone.
"At last the baron came. He was a splendid-looking man, and his manners were perfect. These things tell for so much with girls! He came, and one morning—I remember it well: it was a cold, blowy spring morning—he found me alone in the conservatory and renewed his suit. I was petting the little bird when he found me, and he said, 'Dear little bird! he is to be envied in having so much tenderness shown him.'
"'It is a female bird,' I said, 'and a forsaken bird, for its mate has flown away and left it broken-hearted;' and I began at once to think of Arthur, and fell into a reverie.
"The baron interpreted my little speech and my subsequent silence as favorable to himself. He really thought I was beginning to pity myself because he was going away. 'Ah,' he said, 'you know why I have come?'
"'To say good-bye,' I answered.