She, too, was clad in the Highland dress, which gave an
air of wildness and elegance to her figure that was in
classic harmony with the surrounding scenery. At the
moment of my appearance she was in the act of dressing
the wounded shoulder of a stag, that had recently been
shot; and from the broad tartan riband I perceived attached
to its neck, added to the fact of the tameness of the
animal, I presumed that this stag, evidently a favourite
of its mistress, was the same I had fired at and wounded.
The rustling I made among the bushes had attracted her
attention; she raised her eyes from the deer, and,
beholding me, started to her feet, uttering a cry of
terror and surprise. Fearing to speak, as if the sound
of my own voice were sufficient to dispel the illusion
that fascinated both eye and heart into delicious tension
on her form, yet with my soul kindled into all that wild
uncontrollable love which had been the accumulation of
years of passionate imagining, I stood for some moments
as motionless as the rock out of which I appeared to
grow. It seemed as though I had not the power to think
or act, so fully was every faculty of my being filled
with the consciousness that I at length gazed upon her
I was destined to love for ever.
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