"You might, and with anything else as dear to you. Who is that young lady?"
"My niece." With a steady look at Felix, and with the slightest bit of colour in her face.
"Your niece! I had an idea that you had no relations. I never heard you speak of any."
"No, Felix." (She was fast recovering her composure.) "But that does not prevent my having a niece."
"I can tell by your manner that you love her very dearly, Martha."
"If she were my daughter, Felix, I could not love her more." The composure of her face and manner was wonderful to witness, after her late exhibition of passion and anxiety. "I love the girl you see before you with as intense a love as if I had suckled her at my breast, and as if all other ties upon me (if I ever had any), all other demands upon my love, had passed out of my life. Rather than see her come to harm"— (she stretched out her hands, which now were slightly trembling, and strove hard to preserve her quiet calm demeanour; but she could not quite succeed, as the tremor in her voice testified.) "Rather than see her come to harm, I would choose to have these fingers torn from my hands, joint by joint; I would submit to any suffering, to any indignity; I would live my unhappy life over a hundred times, and be a hundred times more unhappy than I have been. I don't know what could be dictated to me that I would not do for her sake."
The passion of her words and the forced calm of her voice presented a strange contrast. Felix listened in wonder.
"Does she know you are here, Martha?"
"No."
"How did you come upon her, then?"