“If I thought you really loved me,” said Helen, in a softened tone, shrinking from the fascination of his glance, and the sorcery of his voice, “I should feel great and exceeding sorrow—for it would be in vain. But the love that I have imagined is of a very different nature. Slowly kindled, it burns with steady and unceasing glory, unchanging as the sun, and eternal as the soul.”
Helen paused with a burning flush, fearful that she had revealed the one secret of her heart so lately revealed to herself, and Clinton resumed his passionate declarations.
“If you will not go,” said she, all her terror returning at the vehemence of his suit, “if you will not go,” looking wildly at the door that separated her from the sick room, “I will leave you here. You dare not follow me. The destroying angel guards this threshold.”
In her excitement she knew not what she uttered. The words came unbidden from her lips. She laid her hand on the latch, but Clinton caught hold of it ere she had time to lift it.
“You shall not leave me, by heaven, you shall not, till you have answered one question. Is it for the cold, calculating Arthur Hazleton you reject such love as mine?”
Instead of uttering an indignant denial to this sudden and vehement interrogation, Helen trembled and turned pale. Her natural timidity and sensitiveness returned with overpowering influence; and added to these, a keen sense of shame at being accused of an unsolicited attachment, a charge she could not with truth repel, humbled and oppressed her.
“A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon
Than love that would seem hid.”
So thought Helen, while shrinking from the glance that gleamed upon her, like blue steel flashing in the sunbeams. Yes! Arthur Hazleton was cold compared to Clinton. He loved her even as he did Alice, with a calm, brotherly affection, and that was all. He had never praised her beauty or attractions—never offered the slightest incense to her vanity or pride. Sometimes he had uttered indirect expressions, which had made her bosom throb wildly with hope, but humility soon chastened the emotion which delicacy taught her to conceal. Cold indeed sounded the warmest phrase he had ever addressed her, “God bless you, dear, good, brave Helen,” to Clinton’s romantic and impassioned language, though, when it fell from his lips, it passed with such melting warmth into her heart. Swift as a swallow’s flight these thoughts darted through Helen’s mind, and gave an indecision and embarrassment to her manner, which emboldened Clinton with hopes of success. All at once her countenance changed. The strangeness of her situation, the lateness of the hour, the impropriety of receiving such a visitor in that little dark, narrow passage—the dread of Arthur’s coming in, and finding her alone with her dreaded though splendid companion—the fear that Miss Thusa might waken and require her assistance—the vision of her father’s displeasure and Mittie’s jealous wrath—all swept in a stormy gust before her, driving away every consideration but one—the desire for escape, and the determination to effect it. The apprehension of awaking Miss Thusa, by rushing into her room, died in the grasp of a greater terror.
“Let me go,” she exclaimed, wrenching her hand from his tightening hold. “Let me go. You madden me.”
In her haste to open the door the latch rattled, and the door swung to with a violence that called forth a groan from the awakening sleeper. Turning the wooden button that fastened it on the inside, she sunk down into the first seat in her reach, and a dark shadow, flecked with sparks of fire, floated before her eyes. Chill and dizzy, she thought she was going to faint, when her name, pronounced distinctly by Miss Thusa, recalled her bewildered senses. She rose, and it seemed as if the bed came to her, for she was not conscious of walking to it, but she found herself bending over the patient and looking steadfastly into her clouded eyes.