So utterly distracted was her mind that she could never be sure what was vision and what reality.
She felt herself falling into a despair that touched insanity, and inspired deadly horror of the ultimate results.
“I am sinking, day by day, deeper and deeper towards perdition! One of two things will happen to me. I shall go mad in this struggle—I shall go mad and drown myself—or else I shall marry Marcel and murder him! If I could only die decently before being driven to such extremity! Heaven help me and save me, for I cannot help or save myself!” she moaned, in utter anguish.
But the crisis was fast approaching.
It happened on a morning near the last of January.
The guardian and ward left the breakfast-room; he had his hand on the knob of the library-door, and she was on her way out for a walk, when he called her, and begged her to come in and sit with him for a little while.
The meekness of this prayer moved her to grant the boon.
Without a word she turned and followed him into the library.
He threw himself, with a sigh, into his great leathern arm-chair, beside his writing-table. She drew forward a low ottoman and seated herself at his feet, as she had loved to do in the quiet, peaceful days they had spent together, just after her return home.
There was something now in his face and manner so broken, subdued, resigned, as to touch her deeply with tender compassion, and draw her into demonstrations of sympathy and affection that soon deprived him of all self-control. Before he was aware, he reached down his hands, caught her up in his arms, strained her to his bosom, and pressed passionate kisses upon eyes, cheeks and lips, while speechless, breathless, she struggled and fluttered like a captured bird, until, at length, she broke away and fled from him.