It has gone too far." "Gone too far! You mean--" "That I have grown to love him so much, so dearly, that life without him--" "By God! you will have to live without him, for I'll not help you to get him," he said, fiercely.

"Stafford Orme, Stephen Orme's boy! No! Put the thing out of your mind, Maude! See here--I don't want to be angry; I'll take back all I said: you--well, you surprised me, and shocked me, too, I'll admit--you're a strange girl, and say things that you don't mean, and in a cold-blooded way that gives me fits.

Say no more about it; put the idea out of your head." She laughed, and rose, and gliding to him, put her hand on his arm.
"My dear father," she said in a low voice, but with a strange and subtle vibration in it, as if the passion with which she was struggling threatened to burst forth, "you don't know what you ask; you don't know what love is--and you don't know what I am! I didn't know myself until the last few days; until a gradual light shone on the truth and showed me my heart, the heart I once thought would never grow warm with love! Oh, I was a fool! I played with fire, and I have been burned.

I am burning still!" She pressed her hand against her bosom, and for an instant the passion within her darted from her eyes and twisted the red, perfectly formed lips.

Her hand tightened on his arm, her breath came pantingly, now quickly, now slowly.