"I dread the excess of joy——"
"Excess of joy never killed any one, whatever excess of grief may do. Ah! if you only loved yourself half so well as you love this dark-eyed woman——"
"Or as you love Moina," retorted I; for Ian, though he really admired Ernestine, and considered it a duty to love her as his own kinswoman, had never been altogether able to overcome his first prejudices against her foreign taint, as he called her German accent and her Spanish blood.
"Moina dwells by Kilchiuman," said he, "and her eyes have never looked on other hills than those whose shadows darken the waters of the Oich and Garry. Moina is a daughter of the old race; she has no foreign blood in her veins, or strange accents on her tongue."
"But Ernestine is your natural-born kinswoman, and Moina is not."
"My kinswoman!—well, so she is—blood is warmer than water, and by the Cairn na cuimihne!" said he, tossing up his bonnet, "I would march to the cannon's mouth for her; but it is a devil of a pity her mother was a stranger—a Spaniard."
"Nay, I think it has been a great improvement on the old Rollo blood; for I am sure that two such beautiful dark eyes were never seen in the old Tower at Cromartie; but while we chatter here like a couple of pyets, poor Kœningheim is enduring, I fear me, the agonies of death."
CHAPTER XXI.
THE DYING SOLDIER.
The count had been conveyed on board of the Anna Catharina, where Dr. Pennicuik examined his wound, and at once declared him to be past all recovery.