[Waverley by Sir Walter Scott]@TWC D-Link bookWaverley CHAPTER XXI 3/7
For this she was prepared to do all, to suffer all, to sacrifice all.
But her loyalty, as it exceeded her brother's in fanaticism, excelled it also in purity.
Accustomed to petty intrigue, and necessarily involved in a thousand paltry and selfish discussions, ambitious also by nature, his political faith was tinctured, at least, if not tainted, by the views of interest and advancement so easily combined with it; and at the moment he should unsheathe his claymore, it might be difficult to say whether it would be most with the view of making James Stuart a king, or Fergus Mac-Ivor an earl.
This, indeed, was a mixture of feeling which he did not avow even to himself, but it existed, nevertheless, in a powerful degree. In Flora's bosom, on the contrary, the zeal of loyalty burnt pure and unmixed with any selfish feeling; she would have as soon made religion the mask of ambitious and interested views, as have shrouded them under the opinions which she had been taught to think patriotism.
Such instances of devotion were not uncommon among the followers of the unhappy race of Stuart, of which many memorable proofs will recur to the mind of most of my readers.
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