h I will see consign'd with tears to earth.
Leave thou the solemn funeral rites to me,
Grief and a true remorse abide with thee.

[_Bears in the body_.

SCENE.--_Another Part of the Forest_.

_Marg_. (_alone_.) It was an error merely, and no crime,
An unsuspecting openness in youth,
That from his lips the fatal secret drew,
Which should have slept like one of nature's mysteries,
Unveil'd by any man.
Well, he is dead!
And what should Margaret do in the forest?
O ill-starr'd John!
O Woodvil, man enfeoff'd to despair!
Take thy farewell of peace.
O never look again to see good days,
Or close thy lids in comfortable nights,
Or ever think a happy thought again,
If what I have heard be true.--
Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live,
If he did tell these men.
No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man
Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning;
Or bid "good-night" to John. Who seeks to live
In amity with thee, must for thy sake
Abide the world's reproach. What then?
Shall Margaret join the clamors of the world
Against her friend? O undiscerning world,
That cannot from misfortune separate guilt,
No, not in thought! O never, never, John.
Prepared to share the fortunes of her friend
_For better or for worse_, thy Margaret comes,
To pour into thy wounds a healing love,
And wake the memory of an ancient friendship.
And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter,
Who, in compassion to the wretched living,
Have but few tears to waste upon the dead.

SCENE.--_Woodvil Hall._

SANDFORD. MARGARET. (_As from a Journey_.)

_Sand_. The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him,
who by nature is allied to nothing _less_ than a self-debasing humor
of dejection, that I have never seen anything more changed and
spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the
partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to
their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps
ever alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem
to possess and govern in him, as it is by Him, with a wilfulness of
most manifest affection, entertained and cherished.

_Marg_. How bears he up against the common rumor?

_Sand_. With a strange indifference, which, whosoever dives not into
the niceness of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate.
Yet are the wings of his pride forever clipt; and yet a virtuous
predominance