Now a considerable time had passed without any intelligence of Ashley, when, one day, as Mary sat under the tree, she saw a gentleman approach, whom she recognised as Ashley’s friend, George Henley. He accosted her in a bold and familiar style; and told her that her friend and lover had gone to Edinburgh, in the company of Miss Catherine Hamilton, and had commissioned him to yield her what consolation was in his power, in the shape of supplying his place as a new and fresh lover—a commission which he could have no inclination to disobey, when he contemplated her beauty, and recollected the favours she had bestowed on his fortunate friend. The salutation struck the unhappy girl dumb, and Henley mistook the benumbing effects of incipient despair as a passive acquiescence in his ribald sentiments—a consent to his unhallowed purposes. Under this impression, he was about to clasp his arms round her waist, when the enraged and frantic girl struck him a blow, concentrating in its force the collected strength of her frenzied energies, and stunned him beyond what could have been conceived to be the effect of a woman’s uplifted arm. But injured virtue—and poor Mary Lee’s feelings had still a virtue in them—has a power which proud man has been often brought to acknowledge and to feel. The cowardly braggart, only brave in pseudo love, was so tamed by the blow, and so humiliated by the noble attitude of the asserter of her dearest rights, that he slunk away as if he had been caught in an act of larceny, or stung by a serpent. “Go,” cried she, “an’ tell him wha commissioned ye, how weel ye have done your duty, an’ how I have performed mine. Think, as ye look on the earth—for ye canna face heaven—that there is the connach worm crawlin’ amang yer feet, claimin’ the kindred o’ ane wha wasna formed to look in the face o’ a woman! Shun, as the screech-owl does, the licht o’ day, yon eagle that perches on the trystin’ oak, for the gleam o’ its bright e’e will, as the sun puts out the humble peat-moss ingle, blind the dastardly wretch, wha canna abide the look o’ the woman he has insulted. If Robin-a-Ree sent ye to me, tell him that I have sent ye to him, to say that Mary Lee has, in the wreck o’ her feelin’s, enough left to fire the house an’ hearth o’ his new affections.” A strange speech, and delivered with the impassioned mien and voice of the Pythoness. A new and hitherto unfelt power and energy had seized the frame of this strange girl, the instinctive enthusiasm of a deep revenge had come upon her like an inspiration. She turned her eyes from the direction in which Henley had gone, and, with downcast look and a brooding melancholy, sought her home.