'When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again - '
'Stay, my sweet love! A moment! O Marion, to hear you speak
again.'
She could not bear the voice she loved so well, at first.
'When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again, I
loved him from my soul. I loved him most devotedly. I would have
died for him, though I was so young. I never slighted his
affection in my secret breast for one brief instant. It was far
beyond all price to me. Although it is so long ago, and past, and
gone, and everything is wholly changed, I could not bear to think
that you, who love so well, should think I did not truly love him
once. I never loved him better, Grace, than when he left this very
scene upon this very day. I never loved him better, dear one, than
I did that night when I left here.'
Her sister, bending over her, could look into her face, and hold
her fast.
'But he had gained, unconsciously,' said Marion, with a gentle
smile, 'another heart, before I knew that I had one to give him.
That heart - yours, my sister! - was so yielded up, in all its
other tenderness, to me; was so devoted, and so noble; that it
plucked its love away, and kept its secret from all eyes but mine -
Ah! what other eyes were quickened by such tenderness and
gratitude! - and was content to sacrifice itself to me.
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