"Forgive me, brother-in-law; I must say that the way in which you allow your daughter to grow up is inexcusable."
"What?" asked Thurgau, apparently extremely surprised that any one could possibly find anything to object to in his child. "What is the matter with the girl?"
"Everything, I should say, that could be the matter with a Fräulein von Thurgau. What a scene we have just witnessed! And you allow her to wander about the mountains alone for hours, making acquaintance with any tourist she may chance to meet."
"At sixteen? It was a great misfortune for her to lose her mother so early, and since then you have positively let her run wild. Of course when a young girl grows up under such circumstances, without instruction, without education----"
"You are mistaken," the Freiherr interrupted him. "When I removed to Wolkenstein Court, after the death of my wife, I brought with me a tutor, the old magister, who died last spring. Erna had instruction from him, and _I_ have brought her up. She is just what I wished her to be; we have no use up here for such a delicate hot-house plant as your Alice. My girl is healthy in body and mind; she has grown up free as a bird of the air, and she shall stay so. If you call that running wild, so be it, for aught I care! My child suits me."
"Perhaps so, but you will not always be the sole ruling force in her life. If Erna should marry----"
"Certainly, you must expect her to have lovers, sooner or later."
"The fellow who dares to present himself as such shall have a lesson from me that he'll remember!" roared the Freiherr in a rage.
"You bid fair to be an amiable father-in-law," said Nordheim, dryly. "I should suppose it was a girl's destiny to marry. Do you imagine I shall require my Alice to remain unmarried because she is my only daughter?"
"That is very different," said Thurgau, slowly, "a very different thing. You may love your daughter,--you probably do love her,--but you could give her to some one else with a light heart. I have nothing on God's earth save my child; she is all that is left to me, and I will not give her up at any price. Only let the gentlemen to whom you allude come here as suitors; I will send them home again after a fashion that shall make them forget the way hither."