Lord Glenvarloch, shocked, confused, and inexperienced, was about to
leave the house in quest of medical, or at least female assistance;
but the patient, when the paroxysm had somewhat spent its force, held
him fast by the sleeve with one hand, covering her face with the
other, while a copious flood of tears came to relieve the emotions of
grief by which she had been so violently agitated.
"Do not leave me," she said--"do not leave me, and call no one. I have
never been in this way before, and would not now," she said, sitting
upright, and wiping her eyes with her apron,--"would not now--but
that--but that he loved _me_. if he loved nothing else that was human-
-To die so, and by such hands!"
And again the unhappy woman gave way to a paroxysm of sorrow, mingling
her tears with sobbing, wailing, and all the abandonment of female
grief, when at its utmost height. At length, she gradually recovered
the austerity of her natural composure, and maintained it as if by a
forcible exertion of resolution, repelling, as she spoke, the repeated
returns of the hysterical affection, by such an effort as that by
which epileptic patients are known to suspend the recurrence of their
fits. Yet her mind, however resolved, could not so absolutely overcome
the affection of her nerves, but that she was agitated by strong fits
of trembling, which, for a minute or two at a time, shook her whole
frame in a manner frightful to witness.
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