He sprinkled water on her face and hands; he touched her
cheek; it was ashy cold, and the chill struck to his heart. "Helen!"
exclaimed he; "Helen, awake! Speak to thy friend!"
Still she was motionless. "Dead!" cried he, with increased emotion.
His eye and his heart in a moment discerned and understood the rapid
emaciation of those lovely features--now fearing the worst; "Gone so
soon!" repeated he, "gone to tell my Marion that her Wallace comes.
Blessed angel!" cried he, clasping her to his breast, with an energy of
which he was not aware, "take me, take me with thee!" The pressure,
the voice, roused the dormant life of Helen. With a torturing sigh she
unsealed her eyes from the death-like load that oppressed them, and
found herself in the arms of Wallace.
All her wandering senses, which from the first promulgation of his
danger had been kept in a bewildered state, now rallied; and, in
recovered sanity, smote her to the soul. Though still overwhelmed with
grief at the fate which threatened to tear him from her and life, she
now wondered how she could ever have so trampled on the retreating
modesty of her nature, as to have brought herself thus into his
presence; and in a voice of horror, of despair, believing that she had
forever destroyed herself in his opinion, she exclaimed: "O! Wallace!
how came I here? I am lost--and innocently; but God--the pure God--can
read the soul!"
She lay in hopeless misery on his breast, with her eyes again closed,
almost unconscious of the support on which she leaned.
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