"But were it otherwise," cried she, "only tell me, that had I not been
bound with chains, which my kinsmen forced upon me-had I not been made
the property of a man who, however estimable, was of too paternal years
for me to love; ah! tell me, if these tears should now flow in vain?"

Wallace seemed to hesitate what to answer.

Wrought up to agony, she threw herself on his breast, exclaiming,
"Answer! but drive me not to despair. I never loved man before-and now
to be scorned! Oh, kill me, too, dear Wallace, but tell me not that
you never could have loved me."

Wallace was alarmed at her vehemence. "Lady Mar," returned he, "I am
incapable of saying anything to you that is inimical to your duty to
the best of men. I will even forget this distressing conversation, and
continue through life to revere, equal with himself, the wife of my
friend."

"And I am to be stabbed with this?" she replied, in a voice of
indignant anguish.

"You are to be healed with it, Lady Mar," returned he, "for it is not a
man like the rest of his sex that now addresses you, but a being whose
heart is petrified to marble. I could feel no throb of yours; I should
be insensible to all your charms, were I even vile enough to see no
evil in trampling upon your husband's rights. Yes, were virtue lost to
me, still memory would speak, still would she urge, that the chaste and
last kiss, imprinted by my wife on these lips, should live there in
unblemished sanctity, till I again meet her angel embraces in the world