The Count of Monte Cristo

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"You are a worthy daughter of Epirus, Haidee, and your charming and
poetical ideas prove well your descent from that race of goddesses who
claim your country as their birthplace. Depend on my care to see
that your youth is not blighted, or suffered to pass away in ungenial
solitude; and of this be well assured, that if you love me as a father,
I love you as a child."

"You are wrong, my lord. The love I have for you is very different from
the love I had for my father. My father died, but I did not die. If
you were to die, I should die too." The Count, with a smile of profound
tenderness, extended his hand, and she carried it to her lips. Monte
Cristo, thus attuned to the interview he proposed to hold with Morrel
and his family, departed, murmuring as he went these lines of Pindar,
"Youth is a flower of which love is the fruit; happy is he who, after
having watched its silent growth, is permitted to gather and call it
his own." The carriage was prepared according to orders, and stepping
lightly into it, the count drove off at his usual rapid pace.