_Marg_. (_alone_.) It was an error merely, and no crime, An unsuspecting openness in youth, That from his lips the fatal secret drew, Which should have slept like one of nature's mysteries, Unveil'd by any man. Well, he is dead! And what should Margaret do in the forest? O ill-starr'd John! O Woodvil, man enfeoff'd to despair! Take thy farewell of peace. O never look again to see good days, Or close thy lids in comfortable nights, Or ever think a happy thought again, If what I have heard be true.-- Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live, If he did tell these men. No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning; Or bid "good-night" to John. Who seeks to live In amity with thee, must for thy sake Abide the world's reproach. What then? Shall Margaret join the clamors of the world Against her friend? O undiscerning world, That cannot from misfortune separate guilt, No, not in thought! O never, never, John. Prepared to share the fortunes of her friend _For better or for worse_, thy Margaret comes, To pour into thy wounds a healing love, And wake the memory of an ancient friendship. And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter, Who, in compassion to the wretched living, Have but few tears to waste upon the dead. SCENE.--_Woodvil Hall._ SANDFORD. MARGARET. (_As from a Journey_.) _Sand_. The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by nature is allied to nothing _less_ than a self-debasing humor of dejection, that I have never seen anything more changed and spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps ever alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem to possess and govern in him, as it is by Him, with a wilfulness of most manifest affection, entertained and cherished. _Marg_. How bears he up against the common rumor? _Sand_. With a strange indifference, which, whosoever dives not into the niceness of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet are the wings of his pride forever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance of filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts less troubled with conjecturing what living opinions will say, and judge of his deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his indiscretion made so. _Marg_. I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to which the admiring eyes of men should look up even in the declining and bankrupt state of his pride. Fain would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense of respect, which is violated, when without deliberation we press into the society of the unhappy, checks and holds me back. How, think you, he would bear my presence?