“Why, can’t you be my brother still?” said she, looking up quickly, as if astonished.
“Because you are a woman, dear; and I realise now, for the first time, that I love you as a woman.”
Her dilated eyes glistened, for a moment, with a strange expression of exultation, and, in another instant, she threw her arms about the neck of Manton, and burst into the wildest expressions of mingled ecstacy and grief, in the midst of which she sobbed out frequently.
“My mother! my poor mother! what will she do? She will never consent to this—it will kill her.”
“Elna,” said Manton, calmly, disengaging her clasped hands from about his neck, “your mother is an evil woman; I know, and you know, something of her terrible passions. But she shall submit to this; my will is her fate—she cannot escape me, now that it is thoroughly aroused. She must bear it—she shall bear it, if it kills her. I shall hold no middle ground; and she dare not stand before me, or openly cross my track. This expiation is due from her to me. She has striven to hideously wrong me, and wrong you, and she shall now reap the consequences. I shall hold no terms with her; and you must make your choice now, calmly, between us, for ever! I have not guarded you thus for years, with sleepless vigilance, against her demonising influence, to have you fall back at once into her talons. I know it is a fearful thing to ask a child to do—to sunder all instinctive ties, and go apart into the house of strangers; but where implacable evil dwells, purity must look to be grieved in every contact, and there are no human ties sufficiently sacred to justify pollution of soul and body in continuing such contacts. I love you, Elna—I feel it now—I have loved you long, unconsciously; I would make you my true and honored wife, within another year—say the birthnight eve of eighteen. But mark me, you must be separate from this horrid mother. Elna, which do you choose?”
She threw herself hysterically upon his breast, sobbing—
“You!—you! Ah, my poor mother! I see it all! there is no choice! Yours! I am yours!—for ever yours! She is good to me sometimes; but I know she is bad—you must shield me from her. But we will not go away at once—it would kill her. Oh, my poor mother! my dear mother! this is hard!” and she shuddered, as she clasped him more closely in her arms, and sobbed yet more wildly still.
Manton spoke in tender soothing to the gentle trembler, who continued, amidst bursts of hysteric laughter, and smiles of stormy joy, to moan—“Poor mother! how will she bear it?”
Manton, at length, gently released himself from her caress, and placing her head upon the cushion of the sofa, whispered, “Be calm, Elna! She must bear it—she will bear it; it is a righteous retribution, that has overtaken her at last. I go now to tell her every thing. Promise me to be quiet, and wait till I return. She shall know her doom, in this same sacred hour in which I have learned to know myself and you.”
She buried her face in her hands and shivered as he turned away.