It was during such a
paroxysm that the unfortunate Morton left Fairy Knowe. To know that his
long-loved and still-beloved Edith, whose image had filled his mind for
so many years, was on the point of marriage to his early rival, who had
laid claim to her heart by so many services as hardly left her a title to
refuse his addresses, bitter as the intelligence was, yet came not as an
unexpected blow.
During his residence abroad he had once written to Edith. It was to bid
her farewell for ever, and to conjure her to forget him. He had requested
her not to answer his letter; yet he half hoped, for many a day, that she
might transgress his injunction. The letter never reached her to whom it
was addressed, and Morton, ignorant of its miscarriage, could only
conclude himself laid aside and forgotten, according to his own
self-denying request. All that he had heard of their mutual relations
since his return to Scotland prepared him to expect that he could only
look upon Miss Bellenden as the betrothed bride of Lord Evandale; and
even if freed from the burden of obligation to the latter, it would still
have been inconsistent with Morton's generosity of disposition to disturb
their arrangements, by attempting the assertion of a claim proscribed by
absence, never sanctioned by the consent of friends, and barred by a
thousand circumstances of difficulty.
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