His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which makes us slaves to a woman's happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish. There are plenty of _buts_--" "But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he would not be a colonel--" "My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one who appears to me to be worthy of you," the old father added, with a kind of enthusiasm. He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, "Why, my poor Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares and rubs of married life. D'Aiglemont's relations have spoiled him, just as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short," he added, in a quivering voice, "there is a grace of feeling in you which would never be valued, and then----" he broke off, for the tears overcame him. "Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your young nature," he went on, after a pause. "I know what soldiers are, my Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure." "Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie, half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not to please myself?" "To please me!" cried her father, with a start of surprise. "To please _me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father's prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain." He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his daughter's part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the young girl stole a glance at her father's face, and little by little her sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed