She lay in hopeless misery on his breast, with her eyes again closed, almost unconscious of the support on which she leaned.
"Lady Helen," returned he, "was it other than Wallace you sought in these dungeons? I dared to think that the Parent we both adore had sent you hither to be His harbinger of consolation!" Recalled to self-possession by the kindness of these words, Helen turned her head on his bosom, and in a burst of grateful tears, hardly articulated:
"And will you not abhor me for this act of madness? But I was not myself. And yet, where should I live but at the feet of my benefactor?"
The steadfast soul of Wallace was subdued by this language, and the manner of its utterance. It was the disinterested dictates of a pure though agitated spirit, which he now was convinced did most exclusively love him, but with the passion of an angel; and the tears of a sympathy which spoke their kindred natures stole from his eyes as he bent his cheek on her head. She felt them; and rejoicing in such an assurance that she yet possessed his esteem, a blessed calm diffused itself over her mind, and raising herself, with a look of virtuous confidence, she exclaimed:
"Then you do understand me, Wallace? you pardon me this apparent forgetfulness of my sex; and you recognize a true sister in Helen Mar? I may administer to that noble heart, till—" she paused, turning deathly pale, and then clasping his hand in both hers, in bitter agony added, "till we meet in heaven!"
"And blissful, dearest saint, will be our union there," replied he, "where soul meets soul, unencumbered of these earthly fetters; and mingles with each other, even as thy tender teardrops now glide into mine! But there, my Helen, we shall never weep. No heart will be left unsatisfied; no spirit will mourn in unrequited love, for that happy region is the abode of love—of love without the defilements or the disquietudes of mortality, for there it is an everlasting, pure enjoyment. It is a full, diffusive tenderness, which, penetrating all hearts, unites the whole in one spirit of boundless love in the bosom of our God! Who, the source of all love, as John the beloved disciple saith, 'so loved a lost world, that he sent his only Son to redeem it from its sins, and to bring it to eternal blessedness!'"
"Ah!" cried Helen, throwing herself on her knees in holy enthusiasm; "join then your prayers with mine, most revered of friends, that I may be admitted into such blessedness! Petition our God to forgive me, and do you forgive me, that I have sometimes envied the love you bear your Marion! But now I love her so entirely, that to be her and your ministering spirit in Paradise would amply satisfy my soul."
"O! Helen," cried Wallace, grasping her uplifted hands in his, and clasping them to his heart, "thy soul and Marion's are indeed one, and as one I love ye!"
This unlooked-for declaration almost overpowered Helen in its flood of happiness; and, with a smile, which seemed to picture the very heavens opening before her, she turned her eyes from him to a crucifix which stood on a table, and bowing her head on its pedestal, was lost in the devotion of rapturous gratitude.
At this juncture, when, perhaps, the purest bliss that ever descended on woman's heart now glowed in that of Helen, the Earl of Gloucester entered. His were not visits of consolation, for he knew that his friend, who had built his heroism on the rock of Christianity, did not require the comfortings of any mortal hand. At sight of him Wallace pointing to the kneeling Helen, beckoned him into the inner cell, where his straw pallet lay; and there, in a low voice, declared who she was, and requested the earl to use his authority to allow her to remain with him to the last.