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. They warned me that you would never forgive the mention of it. But I can not tell you an untruth. Since you ask me, I must own everything, and take the bitter consequences."
She bowed her fair face in her little white hands, and her form shook as with ague, in spite of the heat of the July weather.
"Since I came to Ellsworth," she cried, "there has never been a night but I have been tortured by the sight or sound of that old sick man. In the dead of night I have felt his cold, clammy hand on my brow, and wakened, sobbing with fright, sometimes to see his dark form fading from sight, and the echo of his hollow cough ringing in my horrified ears. Yet that Sheila Kelly, on her cot across the room, slept heavily on and heard nothing. What secret agonies I have nightly endured only the angels can ever know, Love; but I bore it all rather than incur the risk of your anger and contempt. They had told you I was a coward, and I was trying to be brave, and not to tell you--to tell you--"
Her voice broke in a storm of choking sobs, and her lover caught her to his breast in a passion of sympathy.
"My own brave darling! How much you have endured, like a patient little martyr, without complaint! Yet I feel sure it is nothing but your too vivid imagination. You have heard the silly stories from the servants, and you dreamed the rest while stolid Sheila Kelly slept on unconscious. But this must not go on. I shall write to your mother to come to Ellsworth to stay with you until our wedding; and then, please God, you will forget, in the shelter of my love, all these nervous fancies."
"Our wedding!" she sobbed, bashfully, against his breast.
"Yes, darling, our wedding; for it must be very soon. I have never told you yet, love, that by the terms of my father's will I must marry on or before my twenty-sixth birthday, or forfeit my fortune to my step-mother."
"What a strange will!" she cried, forgetting her terrors in simple wonderment.
"Yes; my father had some peculiar notions. One of them was a rooted belief in the necessity, or expediency, of early marriages; and to insure my obedience to his wish, he framed his will in the fashion he did. But he was a good man, and I am not quarreling with his plans; for I would gladly get married to-day if you were willing, my precious girl," declared Love, kissing her as a fitting period to his sentence.
Dainty made no answer. She was fluttering with girlish timidity at thought of the early marriage he was threatening. She said to herself:
"I love him dearly, but I am afraid I shall not like to be married soon. I have not enough dignity to look like a married lady."
Unconscious of her girlish fears, Love continued, fondly:
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