The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: which she had formed, of nursing in secret her pensive
tenderness, without seeking any other requital. Long before
this, she had dreaded Allan, as much as gratitude, and a sense
that he softened towards her a temper so haughty and so violent,
could permit her to do; but now she regarded him with unalloyed
terror, which a perfect knowledge of his disposition, and of his
preceding history, too well authorised her to entertain.
Whatever was in other respects the nobleness of his disposition,
he had never been known to resist the wilfulness of passion,--he
walked in the house, and in the country of his fathers, like a
tamed lion, whom no one dared to contradict, lest they should
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