All fought in a manner worthy of their leader, and thanks to Heaven, none have fallen." "Thanks, indeed," cried Helen; and with a hope she dared hardly whisper to herself, of seeing the unknown knight in the gallant train of the conqueror, she falteringly said, "Now, Andrew, lead me to my father." Murray would perhaps have required a second bidding, had not Lord Mar, impatient to see his daughter, appeared with the countess at the door of the apartment.

Hastening toward them, she fell on the bosom of her father; and while she bathed his face and hands with her glad tears, he, too, wept, and mingled blessings with his caresses.

No coldness here met his paternal heart: no distracting confusions tore her from his arms; no averted looks, by turns, alarmed and chilled the bosom of tenderness.

All was innocence and duty in Helen's breast; and every ingenuous action showed its affection and its joy.

The estranged heart of Lady Mar had closed against him; and though he suspected not its wanderings, he felt the unutterable difference between the warm transports of his daughter and the frigid gratulations forced from the lips of his wife.
Lady Mar gazed with a weird frown on the lovely form of Helen, as she wound her exquisitely turned arms round the earl in filial tenderness.
Her bosom, heaving in the snowy whiteness of virgin purity; her face, radiant with the softest blooms of youth; all seemed to frame an object which malignant fiends had conjured up to blast her stepdame's hope.
"Wallace will behold these charms!" cried her distracted spirit to herself, "and then, where am I ?" While her thoughts thus followed each other, she unconsciously darted looks on Helen, which, if an evil eye had any bewitching power, would have withered all her beauties.