"I was eighteen last birthday," she answered, humbly, without looking up
at him.
"You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen. Have you
got any of that courage left?"
She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard. A few tears
gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.
"I can't give Frank up," she said, faintly. "You don't care for me, I
know; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to be kind to me
for my father's sake?"
The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more. Never
had she felt the illimitable power which a woman's love possesses of
absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of
her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so tenderly associated
Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment. Never had
the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the
man of their choice--the atmosphere which had blinded her to all that
was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank's nature--surrounded him with a
brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the
possession of the son. "Oh, don't ask me to give him up!" she said,
trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot.
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