The countess, hoping
that Wallace might be induced to accompany them, did not long object to
this proposal, which Lady Ruthven had enforced with tears. Had any one
seen the tow, and been called upon to judge, by their deportment, of
the relationship in which each lady stood to the deceased, he must have
decided that the sister was the widow. At the moment of her husband's
death, Lady Mar had felt a shock; she had long looked for this event,
as to the seal of her happiness; it was the sight of mortality that
appalled her. The man she doted on, nay, even herself, must one day
lie as the object now before her-dead!-insensible to all earthly joys,
or pains! but awake, perhaps, fearfully awake, to the judgments of
another world! This conviction caused her shrieks, when she saw Lord
Mar expire. Every obstacle between her and Wallace she now believed
removed. Her husband was dead; Helen was carried away by a man
devotedly enamored of her; and most probably was at that time his wife.
The specters of conscience passed from her eyes; she no longer thought
of death and judgment; and, under a pretense that her feelings could
not bear the sight of her husband's bier, she determined to seclude
herself in her own chamber, till the freshness of Wallace's grief for
his friend should have passed away.
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