recall the blissful hours by Wilming Weir. She sickened but an instant.
The blood in her veins was too strong a tide for her to crouch in that
imagined corpse-like universe which alternates with an irradiated Eden in
the brain of the passionate young.

"Why should I lose him!" The dry sob choked her.

She struggled with the emotion in her throat, and Mr. Pole, who had
previously dreaded supplication and appeals for pity, caressed her.
Instantly the flood poured out.

"You are not cruel. I knew it. I should have died, if you had come
between us. Oh, Wilfrid's father, I love you!--I have never had a very
angry word on my mouth. Think! think! if you had made me curse you.
For, I could! You would have stopped my life, and Wilfrid's. What would
our last thoughts have been? We could not have forgiven you. Take up
dead birds killed by frost. You cry: Cruel winter! murdering cold! But
I knew better. You are Wilfrid's father, whom I can kneel to. My
lover's father! my own father! my friend next to heaven! Oh! bless my
love, for him. You have only to know what my love for him is! The
thought of losing him goes like perishing cold through my bones;--my
heart jerks, as if it had to pull up my body from the grave every time it
beats...."

"God in heaven!" cried the horrified merchant, on whose susceptible
nerves these images wrought with such a force that he absolutely had
dread of her. He gasped, and felt at his heart, and then at his pulse;
rubbed the moisture from his forehead, and throwing a fixedly wild look
on her eyes, he jumped up and left her kneeling.