can,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
That one short moment gives me in her sight.'

'Good now, Miss Mac-Ivor,' said a young lady of quality, 'do you mean to
cheat us out of our prerogative? will you persuade us love cannot subsist
without hope, or that the lover must become fickle if the lady is cruel?
O fie! I did not expect such an unsentimental conclusion.'

'A lover, my dear Lady Betty,' said Flora, 'may, I conceive, persevere in
his suit under very discouraging circumstances. Affection can (now and
then) withstand very severe storms of rigour, but not a long polar frost
of downright indifference. Don't, even with YOUR attractions, try the
experiment upon any lover whose faith you value. Love will subsist on
wonderfully little hope, but not altogether without it.'

'It will be just like Duncan Mac-Girdie's mare,' said Evan, 'if your
ladyships please, he wanted to use her by degrees to live without meat,
and just as he had put her on a straw a day the poor thing died!'

Evan's illustration set the company a-laughing, and the discourse took a
different turn. Shortly afterwards the party broke up, and Edward
returned home, musing on what Flora had said. 'I will love my Rosalind no
more,' said he; 'she has given me a broad enough hint for that; and I
will speak to her brother and resign my suit. But for a Juliet--would it
be handsome to interfere with Fergus's pretensions? though it is
impossible they can ever succeed; and should they miscarry, what then?
why then alors comme alors.' And with this resolution of being guided by
circumstances did our hero commit himself to repose.

CHAPTER XXVI

A BRAVE MAN IN SORROW

If my fair readers should be of opinion that my hero's levity in love is
altogether unpardonable, I must remind them that all his griefs and
difficulties did not arise from that sentimental source. Even the lyric
poet who complains so feelingly of the pains of love could not forget,
that at the same time he was 'in debt and in drink,' which, doubtless,
were great aggravations of his distress. There were, indeed, whole days
in which Waverley thought neither of Flora nor Rose Bradwardine, but
which were spent in melancholy conjectures on the probable state of
matters at Waverley-Honour, and the dubious issue of the civil contest in
which he was pledged. Colonel Talbot often engaged him in discussions
upon the justice of the cause he had espoused. 'Not,' he said, 'that it
is p