With a faltering voice he requested the solicitor to find means to warn Fergus of his intended visit, should he obtain permission to make it. He then turned away from him, and returning to the inn, wrote a scarcely intelligible note to Flora Mac-Ivor, intimating his purpose to wait upon her that evening. The messenger brought back a letter in Flora's beautiful Italian hand, which seemed scarce to tremble even under this load of misery. "Miss Flora Mac-Ivor," the letter bore, "could not refuse to see the dearest friend of her dear brother, even in her present circumstances of unparalleled distress." When Edward reached Miss Mac-Ivor's present place of abode, he was instantly admitted. In a large and gloomy tapestried apartment Flora was seated by a latticed window, sewing what seemed to be a garment of white flannel. At a little distance sat an elderly woman, apparently a foreigner, and of a religious order. She was reading in a book of Catholic devotion, but when Waverley entered, laid it on the table and left the room. Flora rose to receive him and stretched out her hand; but neither ventured to attempt speech. Her fine complexion was totally gone, her person considerably emaciated, and her face and hands as white as the purest statuary marble, forming a strong contrast with her sable dress and jet-black hair. Yet amid these marks of distress there was nothing negligent or ill-arranged about her attire; even her hair, though totally without ornament, was disposed with her usual attention to neatness. The first words she uttered were, "Have you seen him?" "Alas! no," answered Waverley; "I have been refused admittance." "It accords with the rest," she said; "but we |