Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/343

Rh ," said she, earnestly kissing my hand—"they cannot, when they know you—or if they could, they would not be true friends; I should not care for their estrangement.—Now are you satisfied?" She looked up in my face with a smile of ineffable tenderness.

"Can I be otherwise, with your love? And you do love me, Helen?" said I, not doubting the fact, but wishing to hear it confirmed by her own acknowledgment.

"If you loved as I do," she earnestly replied, "you would not have so nearly lost me—these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you—you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathizing hearts and souls."

"But this is too much happiness," said I, embracing her again; "I have not deserved