"Oh!" cried Bothwell, looking after him, "that the breast of woman had
but half that boy's tenderness! And yet all of that dangerous sex are
not like this hyena-hearted Lady Strathearn. Tell me, try friend, did
she not, when she disappeared so strangely from Huntingtower, fly to
you? I now suspect, from certain remembrances, that she and the Green
Knight are one aid the same person. Acknowledge it, and I will unmask
her at once to the court she has deceived."
"She has deceived no one," replied Wallace. "Before she spoke, the
members of that court were determined to brand me with guilt, and her
charge merely supplied the place of others which they would have
devised against me. Whatever she may be, my dear Bothwell, for the
sake of whose name she once bore, let us not expose her to open shame.
Her love or her hatred are alike indifferent to me now, for I neither
of them do I owe that innate malice of my countrymen which has only
made her calumny the occasion of manifesting their resolution to make
me infamous. But that, my friend, is beyond her compass. I have done
my duty to Scotland, and that conviction must live in every honest
heart--ay, and with dishonest too--for did they not fear my integrity,
they would not have thought it necessary to deprive me of power.
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