He did not expect to
find his mother living,--far less that his unowned wife could have
survived the perils in which he had involved her; and he believed
that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be held by his foes, or
at best by the rival branch of the family, whose welcome of the
outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if not a halter. Yet
the only magnet on earth for the lonely wanderer was his native
mountain, where from some old peasant he might learn how his fair
young bride had perished, and perhaps the sins of his youth might be
expiated by continual prayer in the hermitage chapel where his sister
lay buried, and whence he could see the crags for which his eye and
heart had craved so long with the home-sickness of a mountaineer.
And now, when his own Christina had welcomed him with all the
overflow of her loving heart, unchanged save that hers had become a
tenderer yet more dignified loveliness; when his gallant son, in all
the bloom of young manhood, received him with dutiful submission;
when the castle, in a state of defence, prosperity, and comfort of
which he had never dreamt, was again his own;--still the old man was
bewildered, and sometimes oppressed almost to distress.
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