"Yet think--think but for a moment. I have little to say for
myself in comparison of you, who can both read and write. But then
I wish to hear reading, and could listen to your sweet voice for
ever. You love music, and I have been taught to play and sing as
well as some minstrels. You love to be charitable, I have enough to
give, and enough to keep, as large a daily alms as a deacon gives
would never be missed by me. Your father gets old for daily toil;
he would live with us, as I should truly hold him for my father also.
I would be as chary of mixing in causeless strife as of thrusting
my hand into my own furnace; and if there came on us unlawful
violence, its wares would be brought to an ill chosen market."

"May you experience all the domestic happiness which you can
conceive, Henry, but with some one more happy than I am!"

So spoke, or rather so sobbed, the Fair Maiden of Perth, who seemed
choking in the attempt to restrain her tears.

"You hate me, then?" said the lover, after a pause.

"Heaven is my witness, no."

"Or you love some other better?"

"It is cruel to ask what it cannot avail you to know. But you are
entirely mistaken."

"Yon wildcat, Conachar, perhaps?" said Henry. "I have marked his
looks--"