ain covering his face, he seemed endeavouring to
master the feelings which these recollections had called up. Clara
scarcely breathed. Unmindful of her own desolate position, her soul was
intent only on a history that related so immediately to her beloved
mother, of whom all that she had hitherto known was, that she was a
native of Scotland, and that her father had married her while quartered
in that country. The deep emotion of the terrible being before her, so
often manifested in the course of what he had already given of his
recital, added to her knowledge of the facts just named, scarcely left
a doubt of the truth of his statement on her mind. Her ear was now bent
achingly towards him, in expectation of a continuance of his history,
but he still remained in the same attitude of absorption. An
irresistible impulse caused her to extend her hand, and remove his own
from his eyes: they were filled with tears; and even while her mind
rapidly embraced the hope that this manifestation of tenderness was but
the dawning of mercy towards the children of her he had once loved, her
kind nature could not avoid sympathizing with him, whose uncouthness of
appearance and savageness of nature was, in some measure, lost sight of
in the fact of the powerful love he yet apparently acknowledged.

But no sooner did Wacousta feel the soft pressure of her hand, and meet
her eyes turned on his with an expression of interest, than the most
rapid transition was effected in his feelings. He drew the form of the
weakly resisting girl closer to his heart; again imprinted a kiss upon
her lips; and then, while every muscle in his iron frame seemed
quivering with emotion, exclaimed,--"By Heaven! that touch, that
glance, were Clara Beverley's all over! Oh, let me linger on the
recollection, even such as they were, when her arms first opened to
receive me in that sweet oasis of the Highlands. Yes, Clara," he
proceeded more deliberately, as he scanned her form with an eye that
made her shudder, "such as your mother was, so are you; the same
delicacy of proportion; the same graceful curvature of limb, only less
rounded, less womanly. But you must be younger by about two years than
she then was. Your age cannot exceed seventeen; and time will supply
what your mere girlhood renders you deficient in."

There was a cool licence of speech--a startling freedom of manner--in
the latter part of this address, that disappointed not less than it
pained and offen