Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 4 - 1819.djvu/284

 ver—my protector—and can I then but love you? But your hour of darkness is approaching, let me fetch my harp!"

"Remain," said Allan, still holding her fast; "be my visions from heaven or hell, or from the middle sphere of disembodied spirits—or be they, as the Saxons hold, but the delusions of an overheated fancy, they do not now influence me; I speak the language of the natural, of the visible world.—You love not me, Annot—you love Menteith—by him you are beloved again, and Allan is no more to you than one of the corpses which encumber yonder heath."

It cannot be supposed that this strange speech conveyed any new information to her who was thus addressed. No woman ever lived who could not in the same circumstances have discerned long since the state of her lover's mind. But by thus suddenly tearing off the veil, thin as it was, Allan prepared her to expect consequences