either that there had been an actual apparition of the deceased Henry Morton's spirit,-the possibility of which he was, as a divine and a philosopher, neither fully prepared to admit or to deny,- -or else, that the said Henry Morton, being still in rerum natura, had appeared in his proper person that morning; or, finally, that some strong deceptio visus, or striking similitude of person, had deceived the eyes of Miss Bellenden and of Thomas Halliday. Which of these was the most probable hypothesis, the doctor declined to pronounce, but expressed himself ready to die in the opinion, that one or other of them had occasioned that morning's disturb ance. Lord Evandale soon had additional cause for distressful anxiety. Miss Bellenden was declared to be dangerously ill. "I will not leave this place," he exclaimed, "till she is pronounced to be in safety. I neither can nor ought to do so; for whatever may have been the immediate occasion of her illness, I gave the first cause for it by my most unhappy solicitation." He established himself, therefore, as a guest in the family, which the presence of his sister as well as of Lady Margaret Bellenden, (who, in despite of her rheumatism, caused herself to be transported thither when she heard of her grand-daughter's illness,) rendered a step equally natural and delicate. And thus he anxiously awaited, until, without injury to her health, Edith could sustain a final explanation, ere his departure on his expedition. "She shall never," said the generous young man, "look on her engagement with me as the means of fettering her to a union, the idea of which seems almost to unhinge her understanding." CHAPTER XXVI. Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shades! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College. It is not by corporeal wants and infirmities only that men of the most distinguished talents are levelled, during their lifetime, with the common mass of mankind. There are periods of mental agitation when the firmest must be ranked with the weakest of his brethren; and when, in paying the general tax of humanity, his distresses are even aggravated by feeling that he transgresses, in indulgence of his grief, the rules of religion and philosophy, by which he endeavours in general to regulate his passions and his actions. It was during such a paroxysm that the unfortunate Morton left Fairyknowe. To know that his long-loved and still-beloved Edith, whose image had filled his mind for so many years, was on the point of marriage to his early rival, who had laid claim to her heart by so many services, as hardly left her a title to refuse his addresses, bitter as the intelligence was, yet came not as an unexpected blow. During his residence abroad he had once written to Edith. It was to bid her farewell for ever, and to conjure her to forget him. He had requested her not to answer his letter, yet he half hoped, for many a day, that she might transgress his injunction. The letter never reached her to whom it was addressed, and Morton, ignorant of its miscarriage, could only conclude himself laid aside and forgotten, according to his own self-denying request. All that he had heard of their mutual relations since his return to Scotland, prepared him to expect that he could only look upon Miss Bellenden as the betrothed bride of Lord Evandale; and éven if freed from the burden of obligation to the latter, it would still have been inconsistent with his generosity of disposition to disturb their arrangements, by attempting the assertion of a claim, proscribed by absence, and barred by a thousand circumstances of difficulty. Why then did he seek the cottage which their broken fortunes had now rendered the retreat of Lady Margaret Bellenden and her grand-daughter? He yielded, we are under the necessity of acknowledging, to the impulse of an inconsistent wish, which many might have felt in his situation. Accident apprized him, while travelling towards his native district, that the ladies, near whose mansion he must necessarily pass, were absent; and learning that Cuddie and his wife acted as their principal domestics, he could not resist pausing at their cottage, to learn, if possible, the real progress which Lord Evandale had made in the affections of Miss Bellenden-alas! no longer his Edith. This rash experiment ended as we have related, and he parted from the house of Fairyknowe, conscious that he was still beloved by Edith, yet compelled, by faith and honour, to relinquish her for ever. With what feelings he must have listened to the dialogue between Lord Evandale and Edith, the greater part of which he involuntarily over-heard, the reader must conceive, for we dare not attempt to describe them. A hundred times he was tempted to burst upon their interview, or to exclaim aloud-" Edith, I yet live!"and as often the recollection of her plighted troth, and of the debt of gratitude which he owed Lord Evandale, (to whose influence with Claverhouse he justly ascribed his escape from torture and from death) withheld him from a rashness which might indeed have involved all in farther distress, but gave little prospect of forwarding his own happiness. He repressed forcibly these selfish emotions, though with an agony which thrilled his every nerve. "No, Edith !" was his internal oath, "never will I add a thorn to thy pillow-That which Heaven has ordained, let it be; and let me not add, by my selfish sorrows, one atom's weight to the burden thou hast to bear. I was dead to thee when thy resolution was adopted; and never-never shalt thou know that Henry Morton still lives!" As he formed this resolution, diffident of his own power to keep it, and seeking that firmness in flight which was every moment shaken by his continuing within hearing of Edith's voice, he hastily rushed from his apartment by the little closet and the sashed door which led to the garden. But firmly as he thought his resolution was fixed, he could not leave the spot where the last tones of a voice so beloved still vibrated on his ear, without endeavouring to avail himself of the opportunity which the parlour window afforded, to steal one last glance at the lovely speaker. It was in this attempt, made while Edith seemed to have her eyes unalterably bent upon the ground, that Morton's presence was detected by her raising them suddenly. So soon as her wild scream made this known to the unfortunate object of a passion so constant, and which seemed so ill-fated, he hurried from the place as if pursued by the furies. He passed Halliday in the garden without recognizing, or even being sensible that he had seen him, threw himself on his horse, and, by a sort of instinct rather than recollection, took the first by-road, rather than the public road to Hamilton. In all probability this prevented Lord Evandale from learning that he was actually in existence; for the news that the Highlanders had obtained a decisive victory at Killicrankie, had occasioned an accurate look-out to be kept on all the passes, for fear of some commotion among the Lowland Jacobites. They did not omit to post sentinels on Bothwell Bridge, and as these men had not seen any traveller pass westward in that direction, and as, besides, their comrades stationed in the village of Bothwell were equally positive that none had gone eastward, the apparition, in the existence of which Edith and Halliday were equally positive, became yet more mysterious in the judgment of Lord Evandale, who was finally inclined to settle in the belief, that the heated and disturbed imagination of Edith had summoned up the phantom she stated herself to have seen, and that Halliday had, in some unaccountable manner, been infected by the same superstition. Meanwhile, the by-path which Morton pursued, with all the speed which his vigorous horse could exert, brought him in a very few seconds to the brink of the Clyde, at a spot marked with the feet of horses, which were conducted to it as a watering-place. The steed, urged as he was to the gallop, did not pause a single instant, but, throwing himself into the river, was soon beyond his depth. The plunge which the animal made as his feet quitted the ground, with the feeling that the cold water rose above his sword-belt, were the first incidents which recalled Morton, whose movements had been hitherto mechanical, to the necessity of taking measures for preserving himself and the noble animal which he bestrode. A perfect master of all manly exercises, the management of a horse in water was as familiar to him as when upon a meadow. He |