emerge, and join him; but a sudden awe of him, a conviction of that
saintly purity which would shrink from the guilty vows she was
meditating to pour into his ear, a recollection of the ejaculation with
which he had accosted her before hovering figure, when she haunted his
footsteps on the banks of the Cart; these thoughts made her pause. He
might again mistake her for the same dear object. This image it was
not her interest to recall. And to approach near him, to unveil her
heat to him, and to be repulsed-there was madness in the idea, and she
retreated.

She had no sooner returned to the scene of festivity than she repented
of having allowed what she deemed an idle alarm of overstrained
delicacy to drive her from the lake. She would have hastened back, had
not two or three aged female peasants almost instantly engaged her, in
spite of her struggles for extrication, to listen to long stories
respecting her lord's youth. She remained thus an unwilling auditor,
and by the side of the dancers for nearly an hour, before Wallace
reappeared. But then she sprung toward him as if a spell were broken.

"Where, truant, have you been?"

"In a beautiful solitude," returned he, "amongst a luxuriant grove of
willows."

"Ah!" cried she, "it is called Glenshealeach, and a sad scene was acted
there! About ten years ago, a lady of this island drowned herself in
the lake they hang over, because the man she loved despised her."

"Unhappy woman!" observed Wallace.