Her brain was too wild to think: the
incidents of her life during the last four-and-twenty hours
had been so strange and rapid that she seemed almost to resign
any quality of intelligent control over her fortunes, and to
deliver herself up to the shifting visions of the startling
dream. His voice had sounded in her ear as his hand had
touched hers. And on those tones her memory lingered, and
that pressure had reached her heart. What tender devotion!
What earnest fidelity! What brave and romantic faith! Had
she breathed on some talisman, and called up some obedient
genie to her aid, the spirit could not have been more loyal,
nor the completion of her behest more ample and precise.
She passed the towers of the church of St John: of the saint
who had seemed to guard over her in the exigency of her
existence. She was approaching her threshold; the blood left
her cheek, her heart palpitated. The coach stopped.
Trembling and timid she leant upon his arm and yet dared not
look upon his face. They entered the house; they were in the
room where two months before he had knelt to her in vain,
which yesterday had been the scene of so many heart-rending
passions.
As in some delicious dream, when the enchanted fancy has
traced for a time with coherent bliss the stream of bright
adventures and sweet and touching phrase, there comes at last
some wild gap in the flow of fascination, and by means which
we cannot trace, and by an agency which we cannot pursue, we
find ourselves in some enrapturing situation that is as it
were the ecstasy of our life; so it happened now, that while
in clear and precise order there seemed to flit over the soul
of Sybil all that had passed, all that he had done, all that
she felt--by some mystical process which memory could not
recall, Sybil found herself pressed to the throbbing heart of
Egremont, nor shrinking from the embrace which expressed the
tenderness of his devoted love!
Book 5 Chapter 10
Mowbray was in a state of great excitement.
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