“Not yet! oh! not yet! I am not dead yet! Nor have the halls and acres of my fathers passed quite away from their daughter to the possession of a traitor and an ingrate.”
He gazed upon her now in amazement and alarm. Had she gone suddenly mad?
She stood there before him the incarnation of the fiercest and intensest passion he had ever seen or imagined.
He went and took her in his arms, saying more gently than before:
“Sybil, what is it?”
She tried, harshly and cruelly, to break from him. But he held her in a fast, loving embrace, murmuring still:
“Sybil, you must tell me what troubles you?”
“What troubles me!” she furiously exclaimed. “Let me go, man! Your touch is a dishonor to me! Let me go!”
“But, dearest Sybil.”
“Let me go, I say! What! will you use your brute strength to hold me?”