The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL, 251
shrunk from perpetrating the most horrid cruelty, suffer more fromn the
consciousness'that no man will sympathize with their sufferings, than fronm
apprehension of the personal agony of their impending punishment; and
are known often to attempt to palliate their enormities, and sometimes altogether to deny what is established by the clearest proof, rather than to
leave life under the general ban of humanity. It was no wonder that Nigel,
labouring under the sense of general, though unjust suspicion, should, while
pondering on so painful a theme, recollect that one, at least, had not only
believed him innocent, but hazarded herself, with all her feeble power, to
interpose in his behalf.
"Poor girl 1" he repeated; "poor, rash, but generons maiden! your fate
is that of her in Scottish story, who thrust her arm into the staple of the
door, to oppose it as a bar against the assassins who threatened the murder
of her sovereign. The deed of devotion was useless; save to give an inmmortal name to her by whom it was done, and whose blood flows, it is said,
in the veins of my house."
I cannot explain to the reader, whether the recollection of this historical
deed of devotion, and the lively effect which the comparison, a little overstrained perhaps, was likely to produce in favour of Margaret Ramsay, was
not qualified by the concomitant ideas of ancestry and ancient descent with
which that recollection was mingled. But the contending feelings suggested a new train of ideas. —" Ancestry," he thought, " and ancient
descent, what are they to me?-My patrimony alienated-my title become
a reproach, for what can be so absurd as titled beggary? -my character
subjected to suspicion,-I will not remain in this country;-and should I, at
leaving it, procure the society of one so lovely, so brave, and so. faithful,
who should say that I derogated from the rank which I am virtually renouncing?"
There was something romantic and pleasing, as he pursued this picture
of an attached and faithful pair, becoming -all the world to each other, and
stemming the tide of fate arm in arm; and to be linked thus with a creature so beautiful, and who had taken such devoted and disinterested concern in his fortunes, formed itself into such a vision as romantic youth
loves best to dwell upon.
Suddenly his dream was painfully dispelled, by the recollection, that its
very basis rested upon the most selfish ingratitude on his own part. Lord
of his castle and his towers, his forests and fields, his fair patrimony and
noble name, his mind would have rejected, as a sort of impossibility, the
idea of elevating to his rank the daughter of a mechanic; but, when degraded from his nobility, and plunged into poverty and difficulties, he was
ashamed to feel himself not unwilling that this poor girl, in the blindness'of her affection, should abandon all the better prospects of her own settled
condition, to embrace the precarious and doubtful course which he himself
was condemned to. The generosity of Nigel's mind recoiled from the selfishness of the plan of happiness which he projected; and he made a strong
effort to expel from his thoughts for the rest of the evening this fascinating
female, or, at least, not to permit them to dwell upon the perilous circumstance, that she was at present the only creature living who seemed to consider him as an object of kindness.
He could not, however, succeed in banishing her from his slumbers, when
after having spent a weary day, he betook himself to a perturbed couch.
The form of Margaret mingled with the wild mass of dreams which his late
adventures had suggested; and even when, copying the lively narrative of
Sir Mungo, fancy presented to him the blood bubbling and hissing on the
heated iron, Margaret stood behind him like a spirit of light, to breathe
healing on the wound. At length nature was exhausted by these fantastic
creations, and Nigel slept, and slept soundly, until awakened in the morning by the sound of a well-known voice, which had often broken his slunmbers about the same hour