blic cause prevents
her listening to any other subject. Confide your interest to me; I will
not betray it, providing you do not again assume that vile cockade.'

'No fear of that, considering the manner in which it has been recalled.
Adieu, Fergus; do not permit your sister to forget me.'

'And adieu, Waverley; you may soon hear of her with a prouder title. Get
home, write letters, and make friends as many and as fast as you can;
there will speedily be unexpected guests on the coast of Suffolk, or my
news from France has deceived me.' [Footnote: The sanguine Jacobites,
during the eventful years 1745-46, kept up the spirits of their party by
the rumour of descents from France on behalf of the Chevalier St.
George.]

Thus parted the friends; Fergus returning back to his castle, while
Edward, followed by Callum Beg, the latter transformed from point to
point into a Low-Country groom, proceeded to the little town of--.

Edward paced on under the painful and yet not altogether embittered
feelings which separation and uncertainty produce in the mind of a
youthful lover. I am not sure if the ladies understand the full value of
the influence of absence, nor do I think it wise to teach it them, lest,
like the Clelias and Mandanes of yore, they should resume the humour of
sending their lovers into banishment. Distance, in truth, produces in
idea the same effect as in real perspective. Objects are softened, and
rounded, and rendered doubly graceful; the harsher and more ordinary
points of character are mellowed down, and those by which it is
remembered are the more striking outlines that mark sublimity, grace, or
beauty. There are mists too in the mental as well as the natural horizon,
to conceal what is less pleasing in distant objects, and there are happy
lights, to stream in full glory upon those points which can profit by
brilliant illumination.

Waverley forgot Flora Mac-Ivor's prejudices in her magnanimity, and
almost pardoned her indifference towards his affection when he
recollected the grand and decisive object which seemed to fill her whole
soul. She, whose sense of duty so wholly engrossed her in the cause of a
benefactor, what would be her feelings in favour of the happy individual
who should be so fortunate as to awaken them? Then came the doubtful
question, whether he might not be that happy man,--a question which fancy
endeavoured to answer in the affirmative, by conjuring up all she had
said in his praise, wit