But when the morrow came, and Lady Nithsdale was admitted, he found her far indeed from placidly acquiescing in the fate which he esteemed unavoidable; but neither was she bewildered with despair, nor dissolved in tears: she was altogether different from anything he had anticipated. Her cheeks were flushed, her eye was brilliant, her manner resolved. He was surprised; but he rejoiced that his own fortitude was not put to the trial he had dreaded. "My Winifred will assist her husband to bear himself as becomes a man and a good Catholic: I see she will avoid unnerving me by her grief; and among my many causes of gratitude to her, I may still add this, that she will smooth my passage to a better world. Thanks, my own love, thanks!" "And does my lord imagine I could speak, stand, look, move, as I now do, if I believed it would be carried into effect--that sentence, that horrible sentence! For I was there--I was in Westminster Hall--I heard it; I saw the axe! and I saw you, my own dear husband,--I saw you, and I heard your voice,--that voice which thrilled through all the court, which must have penetrated to the inmost recesses of every heart!" "Oh, Winifred! I could almost chide my best beloved for having wantonly, without any adequate motive, exposed her feelings to so needless a trial!" "It was not needlessly; it was not without a motive that I did so: I had the strongest earthly motive. It was with a view of ascertaining my own strength, my fortitude, that I courted what I should otherwise have shrunk from. It was with a view to the accomplishment of that plan which I have long been forming, and which not all the arguments you can adduce shall prevent me from pursuing. It was with a view to self-preservation,--for is not my life wound up in yours? Think you, in honest truth, think you, I can exist without you? Do you not believe that if you perish, I shall not survive?" "Nay, nay, my love," he replied, almost smiling at her vehemence, "I do believe your affection for me is as strong as ever warmed the pure soul of devoted woman; still I cannot but think and hope that you will live many, many years, to be a guide and a protectress to our children. Remember, you but share the fate of many other fond and loving wives! Have not the other condemned lords wives, fond and loving wives; and must not they endure----?" "No, no, no! Speak not of them! they do not, cannot love their husbands as I love you; for have they husbands so worthy of their love? What is the wild Lord Wintoun, the Lord Kenmure, or the good old Lord Nairne? The Lord Derwentwater, I grant you, is a worthy gentleman;--but what are they, any of them, when compared with you?"