’I choose to say what I please, and think what I please, about my own girl,’ he said, with his arm close wound round her.  ’I say it’s a great match for Adrian Urmand, and I am quite sure that he will not contradict me.  He has had sense enough to know what sort of a young woman will make the best wife for him, and I respect him for it.  I shall always respect Adrian Urmand because he has known better than to take up with one of your town-bred girls, who never learn anything except how to flaunt about with as much finery on their backs as they can get their people to give them.  He might have had the pick of them at Basle,—­or at Strasbourg either, for the matter of that; but he has thought my girl better than them all; and I love him for it—­so I do.  It was to be expected that a young fellow with means to please himself should choose to have a good-looking wife to sit at his table with him.  Who’ll blame him for that?  And he has found the prettiest in all the country round.  But he has wanted something more than good looks,—­and he has got a great deal more.  Yes; I say it, I, Michel Voss, though I am your uncle;—­that he has got the pride of the whole country round.  My darling, my own one, my child!’

All this was said with many interjections, and with sundry pauses in the speech, during which Michel caressed his niece, and pressed her to his breast, and signified his joy by all the outward modes of expression which a man so demonstrative knows how to use.  This was a moment of great triumph to him, because he had begun to despair of success in this matter of the marriage, and had told himself on this very morning that the affair was almost hopeless.  While he had been up in the wood, he had asked himself how he would treat Marie in consequence of her disobedience to him; and he had at last succeeded in producing within his own breast a state of mind that was not perhaps very reasonable, but which was consonant with his character.  He would let her know that he was angry with her,—­very angry with her; that she had half broken his heart by her obstinacy; but after that she should be to him his own Marie again.  He would not throw her off, because she disobeyed him.  He could not throw her off, because he loved her, and knew of no way by which he could get rid of his love.  But he would be very angry, and she should know of his anger.  He had come home wearing a black cloud on his brow, and intending to be black.  But all that was changed in a moment, and his only thought now was how to give pleasure to this dear one.  It is something to have a niece who brings such credit on the family!