Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 4).djvu/228

no longer his Edith. This rash experiment ended as we have related, and he parted from the house of Fairy-knowe, 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 overheard, the reader must conceive, for we dare not attempt to describe them. An 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 further 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.