The complexion of the animated Helen shone with a radiant glow. Her heart panted with a foretaste of the delight she would feel when all her generous wishes should be fulfilled; and pressing the now completed banner to her breast, with an enthusiasm she believed prophetic, her lips moved, though her voice did not utter the inexpressible rapture of her heart.
Lady Mar looked at her. "It is well, romantic girl, that you are of my own powerless sex; had it been otherwise, your rash-headed disobedience might have made me rue the day I became your father's wife."
"Sex," returned Helen, mildly, "could not have altered my sense of duty. Whether man or woman, I would obey you in all things consistent with my duty to a higher power; but when that commands, then by the ordinance of Heaven, we must 'leave father and mother, and cleave unto it.'"
"And what, O foolish Helen, do you call a higher duty than that of a child to a parent, or a husband to his wife?"
"Duty of any kind," respectfully answered the young daughter of Mar, "cannot be transgressed with innocence. Nor would it be any relinquishing of duty to you, should my father leave you to take up arms in the assertion of his country's rights. Her rights are your safety; and therefore, in defending them, a husband or a son best shows his sense of domestic, as well as of public duty."
"Who taught you this sophistry, Helen? Not your heart, for it would start at the idea of your father's blood."
Helen turned pale. "Perhaps, madam, had not the preservation of my father's blood occasioned such malignity from the English, that nothing but an armed force can deliver his preserver, I, too, might be content to see Scotland in slavery. But now, to wish my father to shrink behind the excuse of far-strained family duties, and to abandon Sir William Wallace to the blood hounds who hunt his life, would be to devote his name of Mar to infamy, and deservedly bring a curse upon his offspring."
"Then it is to preserve Sir William Wallace you are thus anxious. Your spirit of freedom is now disallowed, and all this mighty gathering is for him. My husband, his vassals, your cousin, and, in short, the sequestration of the estates of Mar and Bothwell, are all to be put to the hazard on account of a frantic outlaw, to whom, since the loss of his wife, I should suppose, death would be preferable to any gratitude we can pay him."
Lady Helen, at this ungrateful language, inwardly thanked Heaven that she inherited no part of the blood which animated so unfeeling a heart. "That he is an outlaw, Lady Mar, springs from us. That death is the preferable comforter of his sorrows, also, he owes to us; for was it not for my father's sake that his wife fell, and that he himself was driven into the wilds? I do not, then, blush for making his preservation my first prayer; and that he may achieve the freedom of Scotland, is my second."
"We shall see whose prayers will be answered first," resumed Lady Mar, rising coldly from her seat. "My saints are perhaps nearer than yours, and before the close of this day you will have reason to repent such extravagant opinions. I do not understand them."