He is not to be forever cut off from communicating that happiness to which he would give so much enchantment!" Lady Ruthven ejaculated this with fervor, her matron cheeks flushing with a sudden and more forcible admiration of the person and mien of Wallace.

"There was something in that smile, Helen, which tells me all is not chilled within.

And, indeed, how should it be otherwise?
That generous interest in the happiness of all, which seems to flow in a tide of universal love, cannot spring from a source incapable of dispensing the softer screams of it again." Helen, whose well-poised soul was not affected by the agitation of her body (agitation she was determined to conquer), calmly answered: "Such a hope little agrees with all you have been telling me of his conversation with Edwin.

Sir William Wallace will never love woman more; and even to name the idea seems an offense against the sacredness of his sorrow." "Blame me not, Helen," returned Lady Ruthven, "that I forgot probability, in grasping at possibility which might give me such a nephew as Sir William Wallace, and you a husband worthy of your merits! I had always, in my own mind, fixed on the unknown knight for your future lord; and now that I find that he and the deliverer of Scotland are one, I am not to be looked grave at for wishing to reward him with the most precious heart that ever beat in a female breast." "No more of this, if you love me, my dear aunt!" returned Helen; "it neither can nor ought to be.

I revere the memory of Lady Marion too much not to be agitated by the subject; so, no more!"-she was agitated.
But at that instant Edwin throwing open the door, put an end to the conversation.
He came to apprise his mother that Sir William Wallace was in the state apartments, come purposely to pay his respects to her, not having even been introduced to her when the sudden illness of her niece in the castle had made them part so abruptly.
"I will not interrupt his introduction now," said Helen, with a faint smile; "a few days' retirement will strengthen me, and then I shall see our protector as I ought." "I will stay with you," cried Edwin, "and I dare say Sir William Wallace will have no objection to be speedily joined by my mother; for, as I came along, I met my aunt Mar hastening through the gallery; and, between ourselves, my sweet coz, I do not think my noble friend quite likes a private conference with your fair stepmother." Lady Ruthven had withdrawn before he made this observation.
"Why, Edwin ?-surely she would not do anything ungracious to one to whom she owes so great a weight of obligations ?" When Helen asked this, she remembered the spleen Lady Mar once cherished against Wallace; and she feared it might now be revived.
"Ungracious! O, no! the reverse of that; but her gratitude is full of absurdity.