Nigel said, “He would not willingly be importunate, but, as he was about to leave the Friars—” She interrupted him—
“You are about to leave the Friars? I will go with you.”
“You go with me!” exclaimed Lord Glenvarloch.
“Yes,” she said, “I will persuade my father to leave this murdering den.” But, as she spoke, the more perfect recollection of what had passed crowded on her mind. She hid her face in her hands, and burst out into a dreadful fit of sobs, moans, and lamentations, which terminated in hysterics, violent in proportion to the uncommon strength of her body and mind.
Lord Glenvarloch, shocked, confused, and inexperienced, was about to leave the house in quest of medical, or at least female assistance; but the patient, when the paroxysm had somewhat spent its force, held him fast by the sleeve with one hand, covering her face with the other, while a copious flood of tears came to relieve the emotions of grief by which she had been so violently agitated.
“Do not leave me,” she said—“do not leave me, and call no one. I have never been in this way before, and would not now,” she said, sitting upright, and wiping her eyes with her apron,—“would not now—but that—but that he loved me. if he loved nothing else that was human—To die so, and by such hands!”
And again the unhappy woman gave way to a paroxysm of sorrow, mingling her tears with sobbing, wailing, and all the abandonment of female grief, when at its utmost height. At length, she gradually recovered the austerity of her natural composure, and maintained it as if by a forcible exertion of resolution, repelling, as she spoke, the repeated returns of the hysterical affection, by such an effort as that by which epileptic patients are known to suspend the recurrence of their fits. Yet her mind, however resolved, could not so absolutely overcome the affection of her nerves, but that she was agitated by strong fits of trembling, which, for a minute or two at a time, shook her whole frame in a manner frightful to witness. Nigel forgot his own situation, and, indeed, every thing else, in the interest inspired by the unhappy woman before him—an interest which affected a proud spirit the more deeply, that she herself, with correspondent highness of mind, seemed determined to owe as little as possible either to the humanity or the pity of others.
“I am not wont to be in this way,” she said,—“but—but—Nature will have power over the frail beings it has made. Over you, sir, I have some right; for, without you, I had not survived this awful night. I wish your aid had been either earlier or later—but you have saved my life, and you are bound to assist in making it endurable to me.”
“If you will show me how it is possible,” answered Nigel.
“You are going hence, you say, instantly—carry me with you,” said the unhappy woman. “By my own efforts, I shall never escape from this wilderness of guilt and misery.”