"He has in all things been a direful sacrifice," returned Helen; "and with God alone dwells the power to wipe the tears from his heart."
"They flow not from his eyes," answered her aunt; "but deep, deep is the grief that, my Edwin says, is settled there."
While Lady Ruthven was uttering these words, shouts in the street made her pause; and soon recognizing the name of Wallace sounding from the lips of the rejoicing multitude, she turned to Helen: "Here comes our deliverer!" cried she, taking her by the hand; "we have not seen him since the first day of our liberty. It will do you good, as it will me, to look on his beneficent face!"
She obeyed the impulse of her aunt's arm, and reached the window just as he passed into the courtyard. Helen's soul seemed rushing from her eyes. "Ah! it is indeed he!" thought she; "no dream, no illusion, but his very self."
He looked up; but not on her side of the building; it was to the window of Lady Mar; and as he bowed, he smiled. All the charms of that smile struck upon the soul of Helen; and, hastily retreating, she sunk breathless into a seat.
"O, no! that man cannot be born for the isolated state I have just lamented. He is not to be forever cut off from communicating that happiness to which he would give so much enchantment!" Lady Ruthven ejaculated this with fervor, her matron cheeks flushing with a sudden and more forcible admiration of the person and mien of Wallace. "There was something in that smile, Helen, which tells me all is not chilled within. And, indeed, how should it be otherwise? That generous interest in the happiness of all, which seems to flow in a tide of universal love, cannot spring from a source incapable of dispensing the softer screams of it again."
Helen, whose well-poised soul was not affected by the agitation of her body (agitation she was determined to conquer), calmly answered: "Such a hope little agrees with all you have been telling me of his conversation with Edwin. Sir William Wallace will never love woman more; and even to name the idea seems an offense against the sacredness of his sorrow."
"Blame me not, Helen," returned Lady Ruthven, "that I forgot probability, in grasping at possibility which might give me such a nephew as Sir William Wallace, and you a husband worthy of your merits! I had always, in my own mind, fixed on the unknown knight for your future lord; and now that I find that he and the deliverer of Scotland are one, I am not to be looked grave at for wishing to reward him with the most precious heart that ever beat in a female breast."
"No more of this, if you love me, my dear aunt!" returned Helen; "it neither can nor ought to be. I revere the memory of Lady Marion too much not to be agitated by the subject; so, no more!"-she was agitated. But at that instant Edwin throwing open the door, put an end to the conversation.
He came to apprise his mother that Sir William Wallace was in the state apartments, come purposely to pay his respects to her, not having even been introduced to her when the sudden illness of her niece in the castle had made them part so abruptly.