But there was an understanding which I fondly hoped would one day open for me the way of happiness.

But I did not know my father.
Sick as he was--he was at that time laboring under the disease which in a couple of months later bore him to the tomb--he kept an eye upon my movements and seemed to probe my inmost heart.

At last he came to a definite decision and spoke.
"His words opened a world of dismay before me.

I was his only child, as he remarked, and it had been and was the desire of his heart to leave me as rich and independent a man as himself.

But I seemed disposed to commit one of those acts against which he had the most determined prejudice; marriage between cousins being in his eyes an unsanctified and dangerous proceeding, liable to consequences the most unhappy.