CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.
Dark and eerie was the night,
And lonely was the way,
As Janet, wi' her green mantell,
To Miles' Cross she did gae.
Old Ballad.
Leaving Butler to all the uncomfortable thoughts attached to his new
situation, among which the most predominant was his feeling that he was,
by his confinement, deprived of all possibility of assisting the family
at St. Leonard's in their greatest need, we return to Jeanie Deans, who
had seen him depart, without an opportunity of farther explanation, in
all that agony of mind with which the female heart bids adieu to the
complicated sensations so well described by Coleridge,--
Hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng;
And gentle wishes long subdued--
Subdued and cherished long.
It is not the firmest heart (and Jeanie, under her russet rokelay, had
one that would not have disgraced Cato's daughter) that can most easily
bid adieu to these soft and mingled emotions. She wept for a few minutes
bitterly, and without attempting to refrain from this indulgence of
passion. But a moment's recollection induced her to check herself for a
grief selfish and proper to her own affections, while her father and
sister were plunged into such deep and irretrievable affliction.
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