Lady Mar gazed on her without understanding the ethereal meaning of those looks. Judging from her own impassioned feelings, she could only resolve the resplendent beauty which shone from the now animated face and form of Helen into the rapture of finding herself beloved. Had she not heard Wallace declare himself to be the unknown knight who had rescued Helen? She had heard him devote his life to her, and was not his heart included in that dedication? She had then heard that love vowed to another, which she would have sacrificed her soul to win!
Murray too was confounded; but his reflections were far different from those of Lady Mar. He saw his newly self-discerned passion smothered in its first breath. At the moment in which he found that he loved his cousin above all of women's mold, an unappealable voice in his bosom made him crush every fond desire. That heart which, with the chaste transports of a sister, had throbbed so entrancingly against his, was then another's! was become the captive of Wallace's virtues; of the only man who, his judgment would have said, deserves Helen Mar! But when he clasped her glowing beauties in his arms only the night before, his enraptured soul then believed that the tender smile he saw on her lips was meant as the sweet earnest of the happier moment, when he might hold her there forever! That dream was now past. "Well! be it so!" said he to himself, "if this too daring passion must be clipped on the wing, I have at least the consolation that it soared like the bird of Jove! But, loveliest of created beings," thought he, looking on Helen with an expression which, had she met it, would have told her all that was passing in his soul, "if I am not to be thy love, I will be thy friend—and live for thee and Wallace!"
Believing that she had read her sentence in what she thought the triumphant glances of a happy passion, Lady Mar turned from her daughter-in-law with such a hatred kindling in her heart, she durst not trust her eyes to the inspection of the bystanders; but her tongue could not be restrained beyond the moment in which the object of her jealousy left the room. As the door closed upon Helen, who retired leaning on the arms of her aunt and Edwin, the countess turned to her lord; his eyes were looking with doting fondness toward the point where she withdrew. This sight augmented the angry tumults in the breast of his wife; and with a bitter smile she said, "So, my lord, you find the icy bosom of your Helen can be thawed!"
"How do you mean, Joanna?" returned the earl, doubting her words and looks; "you surely cannot blame our daughter for being sensible of gratitude."
"I blame all young women," replied she, "who give themselves airs of unnatural coldness; and then, when the proof comes, behave in a manner so extraordinary, so indelicately, I must say."
"My Lady Mar!" ejaculated the earl, with an amazed look, "what am I to think of you from this? How has my daughter behaved indelicately? She did not lay her head on Sir William Wallace's bosom and weep there till he replaced her on her natural pillow, mine. Have a care, madam, that I do not see more in this spleen than would be honorable to you for me to discover."
Fearing nothing so much as that her husband should really suspect the passion which possessed her, and so remove her from the side of Wallace, she presently recalled her former duplicity, and with a surprised and uncomprehending air replied, "I do not understand what you mean, Donald." Then turning to Lord Ruthven, who stood uneasily viewing this scene, "How," cried she, "can my lord discover spleen in my maternal anxiety respecting the daughter of the husband I love and honor above all the earth? But men do not properly estimate female reserve. Any woman would say with me, that to faint at the sight of Sir William Wallace was declaring an emotion not to be revealed before so large a company! a something from which men might not draw the most agreeable inferences."
"It only declared surprise, madam," cried Murray, "the surprise of a modest and ingenuous mind that did not expect to recognize its mountain friend in the person of the protector of Scotland."
Lady mar put up her lip, and turning to the still silent Lord Ruthven, again addressed him. "Stepmothers, my lord," said she, "have hard duties to perform; and when we think we fulfill them best, our suspicious husband comes with a magician's wand, and turns all our good to evil."
"Array your good in a less equivocal garb, my dear Joanna," answered the Earl of Mar, rather ashamed of the hasty words which indeed the suspicion of a moment had drawn from his lips; "judge my child by her usual conduct, not by an accidental appearance of inconsistency, and I shall ever be grateful for your solicitude. But in this instance, though she might betray the weakness of an enfeebled constitution, it was certainly not the frailty of a love-sick heart."