He has neither father nor mother, and that made me so sorry for him." Her mother kissed her, and said, "You are my own dear, wild girl.

Go and call your father; his coffee will get cold." As soon as the baron appeared, his head still full of his conversation with Ehrenthal, his wife laid her hand in his, and said, "Oscar, I am uneasy about Lenore!" "Is she ill ?" inquired her father, in alarm.
"No, she is well and good-hearted, but she is more free and unconventional than she should be at her age." "She has been brought up in the country, and a fine, clever girl she is," replied the baron, soothingly.
"Yes, but she is too frank in her manner toward strangers," continued his wife; "I fear that she is in danger of becoming an original." "Well, and is that a very great misfortune ?" asked the baron, laughing.
"There can be no greater to a girl in our circle.

Whatever is unusual in society is ridiculous, and the merest shade of eccentricity might ruin her prospects.

I am afraid she will never improve in the country." "What would the child do away from us, and growing up with strangers ?" "And yet," said the baroness, earnestly, "it must come to this, though I grieve to tell you so.

She is rude to girls of her own age, disrespectful to ladies, and, on the other hand, much too forward to gentlemen." "She will change," suggested the baron, after a pause.
"She will not change," returned the baroness, gently, "so long as she leaps over hedge and ditch with her father, and even accompanies him out hunting." "I can not make up my mind to part with both children," said the kind-hearted father; "it would be hard upon us, indeed, and hardest upon you, you rigid matron!" "Perhaps so," said the baroness, in a low voice, and her eyelids moistened; "but we must not think of ourselves, only of their future good." The baron drew her closer to him, and said in a firm voice, "Listen, Elizabeth; when in earlier days we looked forward to these, we had other plans for Lenore's education.