I was silent, not quite knowing how to meet such an outburst of grief and confidence.
More than that, however: I had heard with a rush of joy, which I dared not let her see, the outcry against the marriage. At that moment the feeling seemed to me like a guilty one, but I vowed to myself that if it cost me every drop of blood in my body I would save her from it. But I sat now grave, silent, and thoughtful, while the little pathetic glances of appeal for help which she cast at me shot right into my heart and thrilled me till I could scarcely hold myself under restraint.
When I did not reply—and I did not because I dared not trust myself—she sighed deeply, and said in a tone even more despairing than before:
"I suppose your silence means that you also are against me. Oh, this ambition! What a curse it is! What has it not cost us? But for it my brother would be alive to-day. My dear father was just as surely another of its victims. I am forced to sacrifice all I care for on earth and to wed a man whom I fear. And now you, fresh from a life of books, on whom I built so much, are caught by the same madness, the fever burns in your blood, and you join this mad hue-and-cry after ruin. Ambition—ah, my father often rated me for my lack of it; but what has it brought to us but death, and what does it promise but misery? Cousin Hans, I beseech you with all my heart and soul do not join with those against me. Try to see this with my eyes, and do not urge me. I know you will think me weak and a child, a feeble, helpless coward; but I cannot go on. You are now my only hope. Cousin, do say you will not side against me!"
As she spoke her hands clasped my arm as if clinging to me for help, and she gazed into my face with such yearning appeal that had I been a stone, or the stern, self-contained man I had tried to appear, I must have been moved. And I was no stone where she was concerned.
"God forbid that I should force you," I said, my voice scarcely steady, despite my efforts to control it. "Do not doubt that I am with you in whatever you decide."
"Oh, thank God, thank God! How I have hoped it! Now I have a friend indeed."
No words of mine can describe the radiant look that came on her face as she cried this; and the smile she gave me lives in my memory as one of the loveliest sights my eyes have ever beheld.
After this outburst of emotion we sat silent some minutes—she, in all innocence of relief, keeping my hand between her own two; and I, on my side, drinking in, until I was intoxicated, the sweetness of emotions such as had never stirred my heart before.
I made the first movement—a slight attempt to withdraw my hand. She let go, and then, with another smile of frank pleasure and trust, she said: