"You will save me, Lester?" cried the girl, wildly clinging to him with
death-cold hands. "Oh, Lester, my love, tell me, what am I to do? He is
very old, quite forty, and I am only eighteen. I abhor him quite as much
as I love you, Lester. Tell me, dear, what am I to do?"
He gathered her close in his arms in an agony that words are too weak to
portray.
"You shall not, you must not, marry the man your father has selected for
you, my darling. You are mine, Faynie, and you must marry me," he cried,
hoarsely. "Heaven intended us for each other, and for no one else. You
shall be mine past the power of any one human to part us ere the
morrow's light dawns, if--if you wish it so."
She clung to him, weeping hysterically, answering:
"Oh, yes, Lester, let it be so. I will marry you, and you will take me
away from this place, where no one, save Claire--not even my
father--loves me."
He strained her to his throbbing heart with broken words, but at that
instant the shriek of an approaching train sounded upon his ears.
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