Page:Guy Mannering Vol 2.djvu/145

Rh However, I will not blame him unheard, nor permit myself to doubt the manly firmness of a character which I have so often extolled to you. Were he capable of doubt, of fear, of the shadow of change, I should have little to regret.

"And why, you will say, when I expect such steady and unalterable constancy from a lover, why should I be anxious about what Hazlewood does, or to whom he offers his attentions?—I ask myself the question a hundred times a-day, and it only receives the very silly answer, that one does not like to be neglected, though one would not encourage a serious infidelity.

"I write all these trifles, because you say that they amuse you, and yet I wonder how they should. I remember in our stolen voyages to the world of fiction, you always admired the grand and the romantic—tales of knights, dwarfs, giants, and distressed damsels, soothsayers, visions, beckoning ghosts, and bloody hands,—