She pressed one hand upon her heart, and caught her cousin’s arm with the other to support herself. Her whole face, which a moment before had been alive and radiant with the warm hues of happiness and youth, became as white as marble. Her very lips were bloodless; her whole frame trembled as if she had an ague fit.
He gazed on her in wonder, almost in terror. For a moment he thought that she was about to faint, almost to die; and so violent, in truth, was the affection of her nerves, that, had she not been relieved by a sudden passion of tears, it is doubtful what might have been the result.
They were standing when Durzil Bras-de-fer uttered the words which had wrought so singular a change in Theresa’s manner, within a pace or two of the sylvan bower, of which she had spoken, and without a moment’s pause, or a syllable uttered, he hurried her into its quiet recess, and placing her gently on the mossy seat within, knelt down at her feet, holding her left hand in his own, and gazing up anxiously in her face.
He was amazed—he was alarmed. Not for himself alone, not from the selfish fear of losing what he most prized on earth—but for her.
He knew not, indeed, whether that strange and almost terrible revulsion arose from pleasure or from pain. He knew not, could not even conjecture whether it boded good or evil to his hopes, to his happiness. But the scales had fallen from his eyes in an instant. He had discovered now, what her old father, recognizing genius with the intuitive second-sight of kindred genius, had perceived long before that this young, artless, inexperienced, child-like girl, was, indeed, a creature wonderfully and fearfully made.
He had never before suspected that beneath that calm, gentle, tranquil, unexciteable exterior there beat a heart, there thrilled a soul full of the strongest capabilities, the most earnest aspirations, the most intense imaginings, that ever were awakened by the magic touch of love, into those overwhelming passions, which can tend to middle state, but must lead to the perfect happiness or utter misery of their possessor.
But he saw it, he knew it now; and he felt that so soon as the present paroxysm should pass over, she too would feel and know all this likewise. Whether for good or for evil, for weal or for wo, he perceived that he had unlocked for her whom he truly and singly loved, the hitherto sealed fountain of knowledge.
And he almost shuddered at the thought of what he had done—he almost wished that he had stifled his own wishes, sacrificed his own hopes.
For though impetuous and impulsive, though in some degree warped and perverted, he was not selfish. And when he observed the terrible power which his words had produced upon her, and judged thence of the character and temper of her mind and intellect, a sad suspicion fell upon him that hers was one of those over delicate temperaments, one of those spirits too rarely endowed, too sensitively constituted ever to know again, when once awakened to self-consciousness, that quietude in which alone lies true happiness.
Several minutes passed before a word was spoken by either. But gradually the color returned to her lips, to her checks, and the light relumed her beautiful blue eyes, and the tremor passed away from her slight frame; but her face continued motionless, and so calm that its gravity almost amounted to severity. It was not altogether melancholy, it was not at all anger, but it was, what in a harder and less youthful face would have been sternness. Never before had he seen such an expression on any human face—never, assuredly, had hers worn it before. It was the awakening of a new spirit—the consciousness of a new power—the first struggling into life of a great purpose.