ly failed
me. I tried to scream and could not. The animal was coming
nearer and nearer. I clung to the railing; the shouts grew
louder: "Get out of the way!--a mad dog!--get out of the way!"
Two more seconds, and the beast would have been upon me, with
swollen tongue, glaring eye, and foaming mouth, when, quick as
lightning, across the ditch, and over the railing, sprang
Edward, with a face as pale as a sheet, and almost convulsed
with terror. The dog was close to me; he seized it, flung it
across the hedge into a pond on the other side, and dragged me
to the grounds, and up to a bank, on which he placed me. For a
moment I closed my eyes, overpowered by the terror I had felt,
and the sense of escape from it; but I heard Edward murmur, in
a tone of anguish, "Good God, what shall I do?" I opened my
eyes and looked up into his face; it was so dreadfully pale
that I exclaimed, "You are ill, very ill; for God's sake sit
down."

"No," he answered, "no; now that you are better, it is all
right; I will go home and send somebody to you."

"I can go now," I said; "I can walk." But what was it I saw at
that moment on the ground before me? There were spots of blood
on the gravel! There was blood on Edward's sleeve! Sudden as
the flash that rends the skies, as the bolt that blasts the
oak, the truth burst upon me! I neither shrieked nor swooned;
the very excess of anguish made me calm. On Edward's hand was
the fatal scar. I seized his arm, and so quickly and suddenly,
that he neither foresaw nor could prevent the act. I pressed
my lips to it, and sucked the poisoned blood from the wound.
When he tried to draw his hand from my grasp, I clung to it
and retained it with the strength which nothing but love and
terror can give.

When, at last, by a violent effort he disengaged it, I fell on
my knees before him, and clinging to his feet, in words which
I cannot write, with passion which no words can describe, I
implored him by that love which had been the torture and the
joy of my life, its bane and its glory, to yield again his
hand to me that I might save his life as he had saved mine. As
he still refused, still struggled to get away, I seized on the
blood-stained handkerchief with which I wiped my mouth, and
eagerly clasping it to my bosom I exclaimed, "_This_, if you
leave me, shall make me run the same risks as yourself. If
there is poison in _this_ blood it shall mingle with mine."

An expression of intense emotion passed o