Waverley by Walter Scott — Read

"I am the very child of caprice," said Waverley to himself, as he bolted the door of his apartment and paced it with hasty steps. "What is it to me that Fergus MacIvor should wish to marry Rose Bradwardine? I love her not; I might have been loved by her perhaps; but rejected her simple, natural, and affecting attachment, instead of cherishing it into tenderness, and dedicated myself to one who will never love mortal man, unless old Warwick, the Kingmaker, should arise from the dead. The Baron too -- I would not have cared about his estate, and so the name would have been no stumbling-block. The devil might have taken the barren moors and drawn off the royal caligae for anything I would have minded. But, framed as she is for domestic affection and tenderness, for giving and receiving all those kind and quiet attentions which sweeten life to those who pass it together, she is sought by Fergus MacIvor. He will not use her ill, to be sure; of that he is incapable. But he will neglect her after the first month; he will be too intent on subduing some rival chieftain or circumventing some favourite at court, on gaining some heathy hill and lake or adding to his bands some new troop of caterans, to inquire what she does, or how she amuses herself.

And then will canker sorrow eat her bud, And chase the native beauty from her cheek; And she will look as hollow as a ghost, And dim and meagre as an ague fit, And so she'll die.