"For thy generous forgetfulness of old opinions in behalf of my happiness,
dearest father," she resumed, the tears starting unbidden to her
thoughtful blue eye, "I thank thee fervently. It is true that we are
inhabitants of a republic, but we are not the less noble."
"Dost thou turn against thyself, and hunt up reasons why I should not do
that which thou hast just acknowledged to be so necessary to prevent thee
from following thy brothers and sisters to their early graves?"
The blood rushed in a torrent to the face of Adelheid, for though, weeping
and in the moment of tender confidence which succeeded her thanksgivings
for the baron's safety, she had thrown herself on his bosom, and confessed
that the hopelessness of the sentiments with which she met the declared
love of Sigismund was the true cause of the apparent malady that had so
much alarmed her friends, the words which had flowed spontaneously from
her heart, in so tender a scene, had never appeared to her to convey a
meaning so strong, or one so wounding to virgin-pride, as that which her
father, in the strength of his masculine habits, had now given them.
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