She was now silent; but thoughts not less intense, not less fraught
with self-reproach and anguish, occupied her mind. Should this god of
her idolatry ever discover that it was her information which had sent
Earl de Valence's men to surround him in the mountains; should he ever
learn that at Bothwell she had betrayed the cause on which he had set
his life, she felt that moment would be her last. For, now, to sate
her eyes with gazing on him, to hear the sound of his voice, to receive
his smiles, seemed to her a joy she could only surrender with her
existence. What then was the prospect of so soon losing him, even to
crown himself with honor, but to her a living death?
TO defer his departure was all her study-all her hope; and fearful that
his restless valor might urge him to accompany Murray in his intended
convoy of Helen to the Tweed, she determined to persuade her nephew to
set off without the knowledge of his general. She did not allow that
it was the youthful beauty, and more lovely mind of her
daughter-in-law, which she feared; even to herself she cloaked her
alarm under the plausible excuse of care for the chieftain's safety.
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