When you love, and
struggle with a passion that drinks your very life, you will pity
Joanna of Mar, and forgive her!"
"I pity you now, aunt," replied he; "but you bewilder me. I cannot
understand the possibility of a virtuous married woman suffering any
passion of this kind to get such domination over her as to cause her
one guilty sigh; for guilty must every wish be that militates against
the duty of her marriage vow. Surely, love comes not in a whirlwind,
to seize the soul at once; but grows by degrees, according to the
development of the virtues of the object, and the freedom we give
ourselves in their contemplation-and, if it be virtue that you love in
Sir William Wallace, had you not virtue in your noble husband?"
The countess perceived by the remarks of Edwin than he was deeper read
in the human heart than she had suspected; that he was neither ignorant
of the feelings of the passion, nor of what ought to be its source; and
therefore, with a deep blush, she replied:
"Think for a moment before you condemn me. I acknowledge every good
quality that your uncle possessed-but oh! Edwin, he had frailties that
you know not of-frailties that reduced me to be, what the world never
saw, the most unhappy of women.
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