Clara scarcely breathed.
Unmindful of her own desolate position, her soul was
intent only on a history that related so immediately to
her beloved mother, of whom all that she had hitherto
known was, that she was a native of Scotland, and that
her father had married her while quartered in that country.
The deep emotion of the terrible being before her, so
often manifested in the course of what he had already
given of his recital, added to her knowledge of the facts
just named, scarcely left a doubt of the truth of his
statement on her mind. Her ear was now bent achingly
towards him, in expectation of a continuance of his
history, but he still remained in the same attitude of
absorption. An irresistible impulse caused her to extend
her hand, and remove his own from his eyes: they were
filled with tears; and even while her mind rapidly embraced
the hope that this manifestation of tenderness was but
the dawning of mercy towards the children of her he had
once loved, her kind nature could not avoid sympathizing
with him, whose uncouthness of appearance and savageness
of nature was, in some measure, lost sight of in the fact
of the powerful love he yet apparently acknowledged.
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