Her hair
hung disordered over her shoulders, and shrouded with its dark locks
the marble features of her beloved. Bruce scarcely breathed. He
attempted to advance, but he staggered and fell against the wall. She
looked up at the noise; but her momentary alarm ceased when she saw
Gloucester. He spoke in a tender voice.
"Be not agitated, lady; but here is the Earl of Carrick."
"Nothing can agitate me more," replied she, turning mournfully toward
the prince; who, raised from his momentary dizziness, beheld her
regarding him with the look of one already an inhabitant of the grave.
"Helen!" faintly articulated Bruce; "I come to share your sorrows, and
to avenge them."
"Avenge them!" repeated she, after a pause; "is there aught in
vengeance that can awaken life in these cold veins again? Let the
murderers live in the world they have made a desert by the destruction
of its brightest glory, and then our home will be his tomb!" Again she
bent her head upon Wallace's cold breast; and seemed to forget that she
had been spoken to--that Bruce was present.
"May I not look upon him?" cried he, grasping her hand. "Oh! Helen,
show me that heroic face from whose beams my heart first caught the
fire of virtue!" She moved; and the clay-hued features of all that was
ever perfect in manly beauty met his sight.
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