tranger.

The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing
in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then
he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.

"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love
for yourself alone?"

"Then do you too reject me?" Helene's cry rang painfully through the
hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to you all; I will die."

"What does this mean?" asked the father and mother.

Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.

Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest
by word or action the intruder's strange presumption to the right of
staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic
presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony,
it flashed across the General that he must make every effort to overcome
this influence on his daughter's reeling brain; he caught her by the
waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window, as far as possible
from the murderer.

"Darling," he murmured, "if some wild love has been suddenly born in
your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be something
behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can
tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent
about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you
jealous of our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some
love trouble? Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me
the reasons that urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest
charm, to leave your mother and brothers