and despair," "By G—, no!" The gentleman, much embarrassed, immediately replaced the diadem, and Sir Walter, turning aside, saw his daughter, deadly pale, leaning against the door, and led her at once into the open air. "He never spoke all the way home," she added, "but every now and then I felt his arm tremble; and from that time I fancied he began to treat me more like a woman than a child. I thought he liked me better, too, than he had ever done before."
The whole scene, as we look back upon it now, is a quaint illustration of how far a man's emotions could carry him, when they were nourished alike by the peculiarities of his genius and of his education. The feeling was doubtless an exaggerated one, but it was at least nobler than the speculative humor with which a careless crowd now calculates the market value of the crown jewels in the Tower of London. "What they would bring" was a thought which we may be sure never entered Sir Walter's head, as he gazed with sparkling eyes on the modest regalia of Scotland, and conjured up every stirring drama in which they had played their part. For him
