There is no sweetness, no beauty, like yours." "Do you really mean it, Baron Ned ?" she answered, smiling up to me.
"Yes, yes, every word and a thousand more," I answered.
"But I am so unworthy," she said.
"You're pretending, Betty," I answered, and I argued so well that she abandoned her position.
"Now, give me another reason, Betty," I demanded, feeling encouraged by the success of my first bout.

To this she answered with great hesitancy, murmuring her words almost inaudibly:-- "I could not leave father." That was the reason I had feared, and when I drew away from her, showing my great disappointment in my face, she took one of my hands in both of hers, saying:-- "Not that I should not be happy to go with you anywhere, but you see I am all the world to father.

He would die without me." Here, of course, I might expect tears, nor was I disappointed.

I, too, found the tears coming to my eyes, for her grief touched me keenly, and her love for her father showed me even more plainly than I had ever before known the unselfish tenderness of the girl I so longed to possess.
It was hard for me to speak against this argument of hers; for it was like finding fault with the best part of her, so for a little time we were silent.

After a minute or two, she glanced up to me and, seeing my great trouble, murmured brokenly:-- "If you think I am worth waiting for, and if you will wait till father is gone, I will go with you, and your smallest and greatest wish alike shall be mine.