Suddenly his dream was painfully dispelled, by the recollection, that
its very basis rested upon the most selfish ingratitude on his own
part. Lord of his castle and his towers, his forests and fields, his
fair patrimony and noble name, his mind would have rejected, as a sort
of impossibility, the idea of elevating to his rank the daughter of a
mechanic; but, when degraded from his nobility, and plunged into
poverty and difficulties, he was ashamed to feel himself not
unwilling, that this poor girl, in the blindness of her affection,
should abandon all the better prospects of her own settled condition,
to embrace the precarious and doubtful course which he himself was
condemned to. The generosity of Nigel's mind recoiled from the
selfishness of the plan of happiness which he projected; and he made a
strong effort to expel from his thoughts for the rest of the evening
this fascinating female, or, at least, not to permit them to dwell
upon the perilous circumstance, that she was at present the only
creature living who seemed to consider him as an object of kindness.
He could not, however, succeed in banishing her from his slumbers,
when, after having spent a weary day, he betook himself to a perturbed
couch. The form of Margaret mingled with the wild mass of dreams which
his late adventures had suggested; and even when, copying the lively
narrative of Sir Mungo, fancy presented to him the blood bubbling and
hissing on the heated iron, Margaret stood behind him like a spirit of
light, to breathe healing on the wound.
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