It was therefore with some reluctance that Donald saw me prepare
to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that he himself
followed to assist me in the descent down a very rough path. I
believe his regard for me conquered some ominous feelings in his
own breast, which connected his duty on this occasion with the
presaging fear of lame horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and
other perilous chances of the postilion's life.
I am not sure if my own courage would have carried me so close to
Elspat had he not followed. There was in her countenance the
stern abstraction of hopeless and overpowering sorrow, mixed with
the contending feelings of remorse, and of the pride which
struggled to conceal it. She guessed, perhaps, that it was
curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which induced me to
intrude on her solitude; and she could not be pleased that a fate
like hers had been the theme of a traveller's amusement. Yet the
look with which she regarded me was one of scorn instead of
embarrassment. The opinion of the world and all its children
could not add or take an iota from her load of misery; and, save
from the half smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a
being rapt by the very intensity of her affliction above the
sphere of ordinary humanities, she seemed as indifferent to my
gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a marble statue.
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