CHAPTER LXIX.
AGNES BECOMES PATHETIC.
Ralph took Lina's hand and spoke to her in a sad broken voice, "On one condition, Lina; go home with me now—my mother will receive you joyfully. This miserable absence has not been made public. Take back the protection you have abandoned. I will not ask your confidence, only be honest and truthful with my mother. She loves you. She is forgiving as the angels. Her beautiful virtues will redeem you, Lina. She is too magnanimous for severity, too pure for cowardly hesitation"——
Lina began to weep on her pillow, till the pale hands with which she covered her face, were wet with tears.
"Oh! she is good—she is an angel of love and mercy; but this is why it is impossible for me to go back—don't ask me, oh! Ralph, Ralph, you are killing me with this kindness. Go away, go away! perhaps God will let me die, and then all will be right."
"Lina, this is infatuation; you shall return home with me; have no fear of my presence; in a week after you accept the shelter of my father's roof, again I go away."
For an instant Lina brightened up, then a still more mournful expression came to her eyes, quenching the gleam of yearning hope, and she shook her head with a gesture of total despondency. "Don't, don't, my heart is breaking. I could tell her nothing; he has forbidden it."
"He!" repeated the young man, furiously, "great heavens, can you plead such authority, and to me?"
"Forgive me, oh, forgive me; I am so feeble, so miserably helpless, words escape me when I do not know it. Do not bring them up against me. Oh, Ralph, I am very unhappy. The lonesomeness was killing me, and now you have come upon me unawares, to turn that dull anguish into torture. How could you ask me to go home? it was cruel—ah, me, how cruel!"
"What can I do, how shall I act?" cried Ralph, appealing to Agnes Barker, who stood earnestly regarding the scene.