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? Oh, 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 LV

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
possible