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arriage--get in, get in, get in!" He fairly lifted her in as he spoke. Stunned, terrified, bewildered, she struggled in vain. He only laughed aloud, caught up the reins, and struck the horse with the whip. The horse, a spirited one, darted forward like a flash; there was a girl's faint, frightened scream. "O Laurence! let me go!" A wild laugh drowned it--they flew over the ground like the wind. Norine was gone! His exultant singing mingled with the crash of the wheels as they disappeared. "She is won! they are gone over bush, brake and scar; They'll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth young Lochinvar." CHAPTER VIII. FLED! Mr. Gilbert went to his room, went to his bed, but he did not go to sleep. He lay awake so long, tossing restlessly, that, at last, in disgust, he got up dressed himself partly, and sat down in the darkness by his open chamber window; to have it out. What was the matter with Norine? Headache; she had said--but to eyes sharpened by deep, true love, it looked much more like heartache. The averted eyes, the faltering voice, the pallid cheeks, the shrinking form, betokened something deeper than headache. Was she at the eleventh hour repenting her marriage? Was she still in love with Laurence Thorndyke? Was she pining for the freedom she had resigned? Was there no spark of affection for him in her girl's heart after all? "I was mad and presumptuous to dream of it," he thought. "I am thirty-six--she is seventeen. I am not handsome, nor brilliant, nor attractive to a girl's fancy in any way--she is all. Yes, she is pining for him, and repenting of her hastily-plighted troth. Well, then, she shall have it back. If I loved her tenfold more than I do, and Heaven knows to love her any better than I do mortal man cannot, still I would resign her. No woman shall ever come to me as wife with her heart in the keeping of another man. Better a thousand times to part now than to part after marriage. I have seen quite too much, in my professional capacity of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure, to try it myself. I will speak to her to-morrow; she shall tell me the truth fearlessly and frankly while it is not yet too late, and if it be as I dread, why, then, I can do as better men have done--bear my pain and go my way. Poor, pretty little Norry! with her drooping face and pathetic, wistful eyes--she longs to tell me, I know, and is afraid. It is a very tender heart, a very ro
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