favoured mine. Not that of pecuniary or ambitious calculations; for how
can such calculations enlist you on behalf of a ruined exile? What
remains? Why, the motive which at your age is ever the most natural and
the strongest. I don't blame you. Machiavelli himself allows that such
a motive has swayed the wisest minds, and overturned the most solid
States. In a word, young man, you are in love, and with my daughter
Violante."

Randal was so startled by this direct and unexpected charge upon his own
masked batteries, that he did not even attempt his defence. His head
drooped on his breast, and he remained speechless.

"I do not doubt," resumed the penetrating judge of human nature, "that
you would have been withheld by the laudable and generous scruples which
characterize your happy age, from voluntarily disclosing to me the state
of your heart. You might suppose that, proud of the position I once
held, or sanguine in the hope of regaining my inheritance, I might be
over-ambitious in my matrimonial views for Violante; or that you,
anticipating my restoration to honours and fortune, might seem actuated
by the last motives which influence love and youth; and, therefore, my
dear young friend, I have departed from the ordinary custom in England,
and adopted a very common one in my own country. With us, a suitor
seldom presents himself till he is assured of the consent of a father.
I have only to say this,--if I am right, and you love my daughter, my
first object in life is to see her safe and secure; and, in a word--you
understand me."

Now, mightily may it comfort and console us ordinary mortals, who advance
no pretence to superior wisdom and ability, to see the huge mistakes made
by both these very sagacious personages,--Dr. Riccabocca, valuing himself