"Where can you find such an one, father?" murmured Sybil, with a quick,
strange, wild hope springing up in her heart.
What if he should speak of the young lawyer? But that was not likely. He
spoke of some one else.
"There is Ernest Godfree. No better match for you in the county. And I'm
sure he worships the very ground you walk on."
Sybil made an angry gesture, exclaiming: "Then I wish he would have respect enough for the ground he worships to
keep himself off it altogether! I hate that man!"
"Well, well, hate is a poor return for love! But we'll say no more of
him. But there's Captain Pendleton, a brave young officer."
"I wish his bravery were better employed in fighting the Indians on the
frontier instead of besieging our house. I cannot endure that man!"
"Let him pass then! Next there is Charles Hanbury--"
"Ugh! the ugly little wretch."
"But he is so good, so wise, for so young a man. And he is your devoted
slave."
"Then I wish my slave would obey his owner's orders, and keep out of her
sight."
"Sybil, you are incorrigible," sighed the old man, but he did not yield
his main point.
One after another he proposed for her consideration all the eligible
young bachelors of the neighborhood, who, he knew, were ready upon the
slightest encouragement to renew their once rejected suits for the hand
of the beauty and heiress.
But one after another Sybil, with some sarcastic word, dismissed.
"Sybil, you are a strange, wayward girl! It seems to me that for any man
to love you is to take a sure road to your hatred! And yet, oh, my dear!
I wish to see you safely married. Is there not one among those whom you
might prefer to all the rest?"
"No, my father, not one whom I could endure for an instant as a lover."
"And oh! when I feel this fatal rising of the heart and fulness of the
head--this Wave of Death that is sure to bear me off sooner or later to
the Ocean of Eternity--Oh, then, my Sybil, how my soul travails for
you!" groaned the old man.
"Father! do you so much wish to see me married?"
"I wish it more than anything else in the world, my child."
"Father, you have named every young man in the neighborhood whom you
would like as a son-in-law?"
"Every one, my daughter."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure, my love. Why do you ask?"
She slid down from her low ottoman to the floor, and laid her arms upon
his knees and her beautiful black ringleted head upon her folded hands,
and whispered: "Because, dear father, there is one whom you have forgotten to name: one
who loves me, and is altogether well worthy to be called your son."