"But were it otherwise," cried she, "only tell me, that had I not been bound with chains, which my kinsmen forced upon me—had I not been made the property of a man who, however estimable, was of too paternal years for me to love; ah! tell me, if these tears should now flow in vain?"
Wallace seemed to hesitate what to answer.
Wrought up to agony, she threw herself on his breast, exclaiming, "Answer! but drive me not to despair. I never loved man before—and now to be scorned! Oh, kill me, too, dear Wallace, but tell me not that you never could have loved me."
Wallace was alarmed at her vehemence. "Lady Mar," returned he, "I am incapable of saying anything to you that is inimical to your duty to the best of men. I will even forget this distressing conversation, and continue through life to revere, equal with himself, the wife of my friend."
"And I am to be stabbed with this?" she replied, in a voice of indignant anguish.
"You are to be healed with it, Lady Mar," returned he, "for it is not a man like the rest of his sex that now addresses you, but a being whose heart is petrified to marble. I could feel no throb of yours; I should be insensible to all your charms, were I even vile enough to see no evil in trampling upon your husband's rights. Yes, were virtue lost to me, still memory would speak, still would she urge, that the chaste and last kiss, imprinted by my wife on these lips, should live there in unblemished sanctity, till I again meet her angel embraces in the world to come!"
The countess, awed by his solemnity, but not put from her suit, exclaimed: "What she was, I would be to thee—thy consoler, thine adorer. Time may set me free. Oh! till then, only give me leave to love thee, and I shall be happy!"
"You dishonor yourself, lady," returned he, "by these petitions, and for what? You plunge your soul in guilty wishes—you sacrifice your peace, and your self-esteem, to a phantom; for I repeat, I am dead to woman; and the voice of love sounds like the funeral knell of her who will never breathe it to me again." He arose as he spoke, and the countess, pierced to the heart, and almost despairing of now retaining any part in its esteem, was devising what next to say, when Murray came into the room.
Wallace instantly observed that his countenance was troubled. "What has happened?" inquired he.
"A messenger from the mainland, with bad news from Ayr."