The moments when she listened to the praises of her lover became
gradually more and more dear to the high-born Edith, relieving
the flattery with which her ear was weary, and presenting to her
a subject of secret contemplation, more worthy, as he seemed by
general report, than those who surpassed him in rank and in the
gifts of fortune. As her attention became constantly, though
cautiously, fixed on Sir Kenneth, she grew more and more
convinced of his personal devotion to herself and more and more
certain in her mind that in Kenneth of Scotland she beheld the
fated knight doomed to share with her through weal and woe--and
the prospect looked gloomy and dangerous--the passionate
attachment to which the poets of the age ascribed such universal
dominion, and which its manners and morals placed nearly on the
same rank with devotion itself.
Let us not disguise the truth from our readers. When Edith
became aware of the state of her own sentiments, chivalrous as
were her sentiments, becoming a maiden not distant from the
throne of England--gratified as her pride must have been with the
mute though unceasing homage rendered to her by the knight whom
she had distinguished, there were moments when the feelings of
the woman, loving and beloved, murmured against the restraints of
state and form by which she was surrounded, and when she almost
blamed the timidity of her lover, who seemed resolved not to
infringe them.
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