The grave--and it was a bloody grave--had closed, as she
believed, over the youth to whom she was secretly, but most warmly
attached; the force and ardour of Halbert's character bearing a
singular correspondence to the energy of which her own was capable.
Her sorrow did not exhaust itself in sighs and tears, but when the
first shock had passed away, concentrated itself with deep and steady
meditation, to collect and calculate, like a bankrupt debtor, the full
amount of her loss. It seemed as if all that connected her with earth,
had vanished with this broken tie. She had never dared to anticipate
the probability of an ultimate union with Halbert, yet now his
supposed fall seemed that of the only tree which was to shelter her
from the storm. She respected the more gentle character, and more
peaceful attainments, of the younger Glendinning; but it had not
escaped her (what never indeed escaped woman in such circumstances)
that he was disposed to place himself in competition with what she,
the daughter of a proud and warlike race, deemed the more manly
qualities of his elder brother; and there is no time when a woman does
so little justice to the character of a surviving lover, as when
comparing him with the preferred rival of whom she has been recently
deprived.
The motherly, but coarse kindness of Dame Glendinning, and the doating
fondness of her old domestic, seemed now the only kind feeling of
which she formed the object; and she could not but reflect how little
these were to be compared with the devoted attachment of a high-souled
youth, whom the least glance of her eye could command, as the
high-mettled steed is governed by the bridle of the rider.
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