which he turned upon her.

"You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, perhaps, also you
hide yourself from yourself--"

"What do you mean by that, father?"

"I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love," he went on
quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh! I hoped that you
would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with
me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So
long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for
you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for
your life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no
longer doubt it."

"And why should I be forbidden to love him?" asked Julie, with lively
curiosity in her face.

"Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the father.

"Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
gesture.

"Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of
their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with
this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it
is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the
illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton.
Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man than with
the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the standpoint of ten
years hence, you would admit that my old experience was right. I know
what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits--the gaiety
of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one
of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four meals a day, to
sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that comes to hand, and to
fight. He does not understand life. 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