"Edwin!" replied she, "you, who never felt the throbs of this tyrant, judge with a severity you will one day regret. When you love, and struggle with a passion that drinks your very life, you will pity Joanna of Mar, and forgive her!"
"I pity you now, aunt," replied he; "but you bewilder me. I cannot understand the possibility of a virtuous married woman suffering any passion of this kind to get such domination over her as to cause her one guilty sigh; for guilty must every wish be that militates against the duty of her marriage vow. Surely, love comes not in a whirlwind, to seize the soul at once; but grows by degrees, according to the development of the virtues of the object, and the freedom we give ourselves in their contemplation—and, if it be virtue that you love in Sir William Wallace, had you not virtue in your noble husband?"
The countess perceived by the remarks of Edwin than he was deeper read in the human heart than she had suspected; that he was neither ignorant of the feelings of the passion, nor of what ought to be its source; and therefore, with a deep blush, she replied:
"Think for a moment before you condemn me. I acknowledge every good quality that your uncle possessed—but oh! Edwin, he had frailties that you know not of—frailties that reduced me to be, what the world never saw, the most unhappy of women."
Edwin turned pale at this charge against his uncle; and, while he forbore to draw aside the veil which covered the sacred dead, little did he think that the artful woman meant a frailty to which she had equally shared, and the consequences of which dangerous vanity had constrained her to become his wife. She proceeded:
"I married your uncle when I was a girl, and knew not that I had a heart. I saw Wallace; his virtues stole me from myself, and I found— In short, Edwin, your uncle became of too advanced an age to sympathize with my younger heart. How could I, then, defend myself against the more congenial soul of your friend? He was reserved during Mar's life! but he did not repulse me with unkindness. I therefore hope; and do you, my Edwin, gently influence him in my favor, and I will forever bless you."
"Aunt," answered he, looking at her attentively, "can you, without displeasure, hear me speak a few, perhaps ungrateful, truths?"
"Say what you will," said she, trembling; "only be my advocate with the noblest of human beings, and I can take naught amiss."
"Lady Mar," resumed he, "I answer you with unqualified sincerity, because I love you, and venerate the memory of my uncle, whose frailties, whatever they might be, were visible to you alone. I answer you with sincerity, because I would spare you much future pain, and Sir William Wallace a task that would pierce him to the soul. You confess that he already knows you love him—that he has received such demonstrations with coldness. Recollect what it is you love him for, and then judge if he could do otherwise. Could he approve affections which a wife transferred to him from her husband, and that husband his friend?"
"Ah! but he is now dead!" interrupted she; "that obstacle is removed."