She forgot she was still of earth, while a holy love, like that
of the dove in Paradise, sat brooding on her heart.
Lady Mar gazed on her without understanding the ethereal meaning of
those looks. Judging from her own impassioned feelings, she could only
resolve the resplendent beauty which shone from the now animated face
and form of Helen into the rapture of finding herself beloved. Had she
not heard Wallace declare himself to be the unknown knight who had
rescued Helen? She had heard him devote his life to her, and was not
his heart included in that dedication? She had then heard that love
vowed to another, which she would have sacrificed her soul to win!
Murray too was confounded; but his reflections were far different from
those of Lady Mar. He saw his newly self-discerned passion smothered
in its first breath. At the moment in which he found that he loved his
cousin above all of women's mold, an unappealable voice in his bosom
made him crush every fond desire. That heart which, with the chaste
transports of a sister, had throbbed so entrancingly against his, was
then another's! was become the captive of Wallace's virtues; of the
only man who, his judgment would have said, deserves Helen Mar! But
when he clasped her glowing beauties in his arms only the night before,
his enraptured soul then believed that the tender smile he saw on her
lips was meant as the sweet earnest of the happier moment, when he
might hold her there forever! That dream was now past.
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