"But the other, which you raised yourself!" replied Edwin; "while a wife, you showed to Sir William Wallace that you could not only indulge yourself in wishes hostile to your nuptial faith, but divulge them to him. Ah! my aunt, what could you look for as the consequence of this? My uncle yet lived when you did this! And that act, were you youthful as Hebe, and more tender than ever was fabled the queen of love, I am sure, the virtue of Wallace would never pardon. He never could pledge his faith to one whose passions had so far silenced her sense of duty; and did he even love you, he would not, for the empire of the world, repose his honor in such keeping."
"Edwin!" cired she, at last summoning power to speak, for during the latter part of this address she had sat gasping from unutterable disappointment and rage; "are you not afraid to breathe all this to me? I have given you my confidence and do you abuse it? Do you stab me, when I ask you to heal?"
"No, my dear aunt," replied he; "I speak the truth to you, ungrateful as it is, to prevent you hearing it in perhaps a more painful form from Wallace himself."
"Oh, no!" cried she, with contemptuous haughtiness; "he is a man, and he knows how to pardon the excesses of love! Look around you, foolish boy, and see how many of our proudest lords have united their fates with women who not only loved them while their husbands lived, but left their homes and children to join their lovers! And what is there in me, a princess of the crowns of Scotland and of Norway—a woman who has had the nobles of both kingdoms at her feet, and frowned upon them all-that I should now be contemned? Is the ingrate for whom alone I ever felt a wish of love—is he to despise me for my passion? You mistake, Edwin; you know not the heart of man."
"Not of the common race of men, perhaps," replied he; "but certainly that of Sir William Wallace. Purity and he are too sincerely one for personal vanity to blind his eyes to the deformity of the passion you describe. And mean as I am when compared with him, I must aver that, were a married woman to love me, and seek to excuse her frailty, I should see alone her contempt of the principles which are the only impregnable bulwarks of innocence, and shrink from her as I would from pollution."
"Then you declare yourself my enemy, Edwin?"
"No," replied he; "I speak to you as a son; but if you are determined to avow to Sir William Wallace what you have revealed to me, I shall not even observe on what has passed, but leave you, unhappy lady, to the pangs I would have spared you."
He rose. Lady Mar wrung her hands in a paroxysm of conviction that what he said was true.
"Then, Edwin, I must despair?"
He looked at her with pity.