'Vain indeed!' echoed Waverley.
'Or even of the future, my good friend,' said Flora,'so far as earthly events are concerned; for how often have I pictured to myself the strong possibility of this horrid issue, and tasked myself to consider how I could support my part; and yet how far has all my anticipation fallen short of the unimaginable bitterness of this hour!'
'Dear Flora, if your strength of mind—'
'Ay, there it is,' she answered, somewhat wildly; 'there is, Mr.
Waverley, there is a busy devil at my heart that whispers—but it
were madness to listen to it—that the strength of mind on which
Flora prided herself has murdered her brother!'
'Good God! how can you give utterance to a thought so shocking?'
'Ay, is it not so? but yet it haunts me like a phantom; I know it is unsubstantial and vain; but it will be present; will intrude its horrors on my mind; will whisper that my brother, as volatile as ardent, would have divided his energies amid a hundred objects. It was I who taught him to concentrate them and to gage all on this dreadful and desperate cast. Oh that I could recollect that I had but once said to him, "He that striketh with the sword shall die by the sword"; that I had but once said, "Remain at home; reserve yourself, your vassals, your life, for enterprises within the reach of man." But O, Mr. Waverley, I spurred his fiery temper, and half of his ruin at least lies with his sister!'
The horrid idea which she had intimated, Edward endeavoured to combat by every incoherent argument that occurred to him. He recalled to her the principles on which both thought it their duty to act, and in which they had been educated.
'Do not think I have forgotten them,' she said, looking up with eager quickness; 'I do not regret his attempt because it was wrong!—O no! on that point I am armed—but because it was impossible it could end otherwise than thus.'
'Yet it did not always seem so desperate and hazardous as it was; and it would have been chosen by the bold spirit of Fergus whether you had approved it or no; your counsels only served to give unity and consistence to his conduct; to dignify, but not to precipitate, his resolution.' Flora had soon ceased to listen to Edward, and was again intent upon her needlework.
'Do you remember,' she said, looking up with a ghastly smile, 'you once found me making Fergus's bride-favours, and now I am sewing his bridal garment. Our friends here,' she continued, with suppressed emotion, 'are to give hallowed earth in their chapel to the bloody relics of the last Vich Ian Vohr. But they will not all rest together; no—his head!—I shall not have the last miserable consolation of kissing the cold lips of my dear, dear Fergus!'