a man, and see the world as it is. I have told you how to earn my
daughter's hand and my esteem: you must gain both, or neither."

Dr. Staines was never quite deaf to reason: he now put his hand to his
brow and said, with a sort of wonder and pitiful dismay, "My love
for Rosa selfish! Sir, your words are bitter and hard." Then, after a
struggle, and with rare and touching candor, "Ay, but so are bark and
steel; yet they are good medicines." Then with a great glow in his heart
and tears in his eyes, "My darling shall not be a poor man's wife,
she who would adorn a coronet, ay, or a crown. Good-by, Rosa, for the
present." He darted to her, and kissed her hand with all his soul. "Oh,
the sacrifice of leaving you," he faltered; "the very world is dark
to me without you. Ah, well, I must earn the right to come again." He
summoned all his manhood, and marched to the door. There he seemed to
turn calmer all of a sudden, and said firmly, yet humbly, "I'll try and
show you, sir, what love can do."

"And I'll show you what love can suffer," said Rosa, folding her
beautiful arms superbly.

It was not in her to have shot such a bolt, except in imitation; yet how
promptly the mimic thunder came, and how grand the beauty looked, with
her dark brows, and flashing eyes, and folded arms! much grander and
more inspired than poor Staines, who had only furnished the idea.

But between these two figures swelling with emotion, the representative
of common sense, Lusignan pere, stood cool and impassive; he shrugged
his shoulders, and looked on both lovers as a couple of ranting novices
he was saving from each other and almshouses.