“I have avoided her—struggled, suffered, tried to crush the great love that is within me, and this is the end! What is left to me?”
I saw a shudder pass over him, and knew that he was thinking of us—me and my mother.
Again his voice reached me, not loud, but deep and solemnly impressive. His mournful eyes were bent upon her, and he slowly sunk to her side.
“Let her live—only live,” he said, “and so help me heaven, her own will shall dispose of me! Let all else perish, so she but breathe again!”
I rose from the ground and stood before him. My little hand was clenched, and my frame shook with passion seldom known to one of my tender years.
He started, as if a serpent had sprung up from the bosom of that beloved one, gazed in my eyes an instant, and then put me sternly back with his hand.
“Go,” he said, with a sharp breath, as if every word were a pain—“go, weird child, I ask not what evil thing brings you to search my soul with those unnatural eyes—but go and tell your mother all that you can understand of this. Tell her that if this lady lives, she will be my wife—if not, I leave England forever. Tell her all!”
“I will tell her!” I said, looking fiercely into his eyes. “You shall never see her again, never, never, never!”
Such passion must have been fearful in a little child. He looked on me with a sort of terror.
“Tell your mother I will write, and send Turner to her,” he said, more gently.