Читать книгу Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate. A Scottish Historical Romance онлайн

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"Ah! who can e'er forget so fair a being?

Who can forget her half retiring sweets?

God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats

For man's protection."

When Jane thought for a moment of how long this great political inquisitor and public prosecutor had been the feudal foe and legal oppressor of her mother's kinsman and her father's house, and that he had but recently (as she had gathered from her brother) meditated or attempted the assassination of her lover,—as he had previously done the chief of the Maclellans,—she felt her whole heart recoil from him as from a serpent, with terror and abhorrence. Nevertheless, finding that Sybil and her cavalier had disappeared among the groups of revellers who dotted the moonlit lawn, she had sufficient tact to veil her inward repugnance and suspicions under an outward politeness, and to incline her head slightly when he bowed and assumed a position for conversing by leaning his handsome and stately figure against the stone arm of the sofa, which was formed of a wyvern with its wings outspread.