“I am almost beside myself, am I not? I can not speak to you, it seems! And yet there is so much to say—or no! isn’t silence better still?” Her voice trembled as she went on: “For what could we say? How meaningless all our words would be in the face of—— of——-.”
She swept both hands to her eyes, with an impetuous gesture. Her form seemed to totter for a moment, so that Seth instinctively moved toward her. Then with a wild outburst of sobs she threw herself upon his breast, convulsed with incessant paroxysms of passionate weeping.
They stood thus together for some minutes. The young man, moved to great tenderness by her evident suffering, the cause of which he vaguely referred to the previous evening’s events, put his arm about her, whispered gently to her to be comforted, and stroked her hair with a soft, caressing touch. His hand touched her cheek, and she shuddered at the contact; then swiftly took the hand in hers, and raised it to her lips, murmuring between the sobs:
“Ungrateful! was it not done for me? Ah, dear, I shall not shudder again.”
She kissed the hand repeatedly, and pressed it to her bosom, as she spoke. She was still trembling like a leaf in his arms.
What could it all mean? he asked himself—and found no answer.
“We must be brave, dear,” she whispered now. “We must be on our guard every instant! Oh—h! they shall tear my heart out before they learn anything—so much as a syllable! We must keep our nerves.” She looked up into his astonished face, with almost a smile in her effort to strengthen his courage. “We will be brave, won’t we, mine? The test will come soon now. Perhaps in an hour they will bring—it!”
The trembling seized her frame, and shook it with cruel force. She buried her face in his breast with along, low cry of anguish, and sobbed there piteously, clinging to his hand still. Once she bent as if to kiss it again, but stopped, then turned her head aside, groaning “Oh how terrible! how terrible!”
The mystification now demanded light of some sort.
“What is it that is so terrible, my poor girl?” he asked. “What are they going to bring in an hour? Tell me, Isabel—my sweet sister—what does it all mean?”