In a postscript, Sir William said something more explicitly, which
seemed to intimate that, rather than the law of Scotland should sustain
a severe wound through his sides, by a reversal of the judgment of her
supreme courts, in the case of the barony of Ravenswood, through the
intervention of what, with all submission, he must term a foreign court
of appeal, he himself would extrajudically consent to considerable
sacrifices.

From Lucy Ashton, by some unknown conveyance, the Master received the
following lines: "I received yours, but it was at the utmost risk; do
not attempt to write again till better times. I am sore beset, but I
will be true to my word, while the exercise of my reason is vouchsafed
to me. That you are happy and prosperous is some consolation, and my
situation requires it all." The note was signed "L.A."

This letter filled Ravenswood with the most lively alarm. He made many
attempts, notwithstanding her prohibition, to convey letters to Miss
Ashton, and even to obtain an interview; but his plans were frustrated,
and he had only the mortification to learn that anxious and effectual
precautions had been taken to prevent the possibility of their
correspondence. The Master was the more distressed by these
circumstances, as it became impossible to delay his departure from
Scotland, upon the important mission which had been confided to him.
Before his departure, he put Sir William Ashton's letter into the hands
of the Marquis of A----, who observed with a smile, that Sir William's
day of grace was past, and that he had now to learn which side of the
hedge the sun had got to. It was with the greatest difficulty that
Ravenswood extorted from the Marquis a promise that he would compromise
the proceedings in Parliament, providing Sir William should be disposed
to acquiesce in a union between him and Lucy Ashton.

"I would hardly," said the Marquis, "consent to your throwing away your
birthright in this manner, were I not perfectly confident that Lady
Ashton, or Lady Douglas, or whatever she calls herself, will, as
Scotchmen say, keep her threep; and that her husband dares not
contradict her."

"But yet," said the Master, "I trust your lordship will consider my
engagement as sacred."

"Believe my word of honour," said the Marquis, "I would be a friend even
to your follies; and having thus told you MY opinion, I will endeavour,
as occasion offers, to serve you according to your own."

The master of Ravenswood could but thank his generous kinsman and
patron, and leave him full power to act in all his affairs. He departed
from Scotland upon his mission, which, it was supposed, might detain him
upon the continent for some months.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

     Was ever woman in this humor wooed?
     Was ever woman in this humour won?
     I'll have her.

     Richard III.

TWELVE months had passed away since the Master of Ravenswood's departure
for the continent, and, although his return to Scotland had been
expected in a much shorter space, yet the affairs of his mission,
or, according to a prevailing report, others of a nature personal to
himself, still detained him abroad. In the mean time, the altered state
of affairs in Sir William Ashton's family may be gathered from the
following conversation which took place betwixt Bucklaw and his
confidential bottle companion and dependant, the noted Captain
Craigengelt. They were seated on either side of the huge
sepulchral-looking freestone chimney in the low hall at Girnington.
A wood fire blazed merrily in the grate; a round oaken table, placed
between them, supported a stoup of excellent claret, two rummer glasses,
and other good cheer; and yet, with all these appliances and means
to boot, the countenance of the patron was dubious, doubtful, and
unsatisfied, while the invention of his dependant was taxed to the
utmost to parry what he most dreaded, a fit, as he called it, of
the sullens, on the part of his protector. After a long pause, only
interrupted by the devil's tattoo, which Bucklaw kept beating against
the hearth with the toe of his boot, Craigengelt at last ventured to
break silence. "May I be double distanced," said he, "if ever I saw a
man in my life have less the air of a bridegroom! Cut me out of feather,
if you have not more the look of a man condemned to be hanged!"

"My kind thanks for the compliment," replied Bucklaw; "but I suppose you
think upon the predicament in which you yourself are most likely to be
placed; and pray, Captain Craigengelt, if it please your worship, why
should I look merry, when I'm sad, and devilish sad too?"

"And that's what vexes me," said Craigengelt. "Here is this match, the
best in the whole country, and which were so anxious about, is on the
point of being concluded, and you are as sulky as a bear that has lost
its whelps."

"I do not know," answered the Laird, doggedly, "whether I should
conclude or not, if it was not that I am too far forwards to leap back."

"Leap back!" exclaimed Craigengelt, with a well-assumed air of
astonishment, "that would be playing the back-game with a witness! Leap
back! Why, is not the girl's fortune----"

"The young lady's, if you please," said Hayston, interrupting him.

"Well--well, no disrespect meant. Will Miss Ashton's tocher not weigh
against any in Lothian?"

"Granted," answered Bucklaw; "but I care not a penny for her tocher; I
have enough of my own."

"And the mother, that loves you like her own child?"

"Better than some of her children, I believe," said Bucklaw, "or there
would be little love wared on the matter."

"And Colonel Sholto Douglas Ashton, who desires the marriage above all
earthly things?"

"Because," said Bucklaw, "he expects to carry the county of ---- through
my interest."

"And the father, who is as keen to see the match concluded as ever I
have been to win a main?"

"Ay," said Bucklaw, in the same disparaging manner, "it lies with Sir
William's policy to secure the next best match, since he cannot barter
his child to save the great Ravenswood estate, which the English House
of Lords are about to wrench out of his clutches."

"What say you to the young lady herself?" said Craigengelt; "the finest
young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she
was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement
with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil's in ye,
when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want."

"I'll tell you my meaning in a word," answered Bucklaw, getting up and
walking through the room; "I want to know what the devil is the cause of
Miss Ashton's changing her mind so suddenly?"

"And what need you care," said Craigengelt, "since the change is in your
favour?"

"I'll tell you what it is," returned his patron, "I never knew much of
that sort of fine ladies, and I believe they may be as capricious as the
devil; but there is something in Miss Ashton's change a devilish deal
too sudden and too serious for a mere flisk of her own. I'll be bound,
Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human
mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bit, martingales, and
cavessons for young colts."

"And if that were not the case," said Craigengelt, "how the devil should
we ever get them into training at all?"

"And that's true too," said Bucklaw, suspending his march through the
dining-room, and leaning upon the back of a chair. "And besides,
here's Ravenswood in the way still, do you think he'll give up Lucy's
engagement?"

"To be sure he will," answered Craigengelt; "what good can it do him to
refuse, since he wishes to marry another woman and she another man?"

"And you believe seriously," said Bucklaw, "that he is going to marry
the foreign lady we heard of?"

"You heard yourself," answered Craigengelt, "what Captain Westenho said
about it, and the great preparation made for their blythesome bridal."

"Captain Westenho," replied Bucklaw, "has rather too much of your own
cast about, Craigie, to make what Sir William would call a 'famous
witness.' He drinks deep, plays deep, swears deep, and I suspect can lie
and cheat a little into the bargain; useful qualities, Craigie, if
kept in their proper sphere, but which have a little too much of the
freebooter to make a figure in a court of evidence."

"Well, then," said Craigengelt, "will you believe Colonel Douglas
Ashton, who heard the Marquis of A---- say in a public circle, but not
aware that he was within ear-shot, that his kinsman had made a
better arrangement for himself than to give his father's land for the
pale-cheeked daughter of a broken-down fanatic, and that Bucklaw was
welcome to the wearing of Ravenswood's shaughled shoes."

"Did he say so, by heavens!" cried Bucklaw, breaking out into one of
those incontrollable fits of passion to which he was constitutionally
subject; "if I had heard him, I would have torn the tongue out of his
throat before all his peats and minions, and Highland bullies into the
bargain. Why did not Ashton run him through the body?"

"Capot me if I know," said the Captain. "He deserved it sure enough; but
he is an old man, and a minister of state, and there would be more risk
than credit in meddling with him. You had more need to think of making
up to Miss Lucy Ashton the disgrace that's like to fall upon her than of
interfering with a man too old to fight, and on too high a tool for your
hand to reach him."

"It SHALL reach him, though, one day," said Bucklaw, "and his kinsman
Ravenswood to boot. In the mean time, I'll take care Miss Ashton
receives no discredit for the slight they have put upon her. It's an
awkward job, however, and I wish it were ended; I scarce know how to
talk to her,--but fill a bumper, Craigie, and we'll drink her health.
It grows late, and a night-cowl of good claret is worth all the
considering-caps in Europe."




CHAPTER XXIX.

     It was the copy of our conference.
     In bed she slept not, for my urging it;
     At board she fed not, for my urging it;
     Alone, it was the subject of my theme;
     In company I often glanced at it.

     Comedy of Errors.

THE next morning saw Bucklaw and his faithful Achates, Craigengelt, at
Ravenswood Castle. They were most courteously received by the knight
and his lady, as well, as by their son and heir, Colonel Ashton. After
a good deal of stammering and blushing--for Bucklaw, notwithstanding his
audacity in other matters, had all the sheepish bashfulness common to
those who have lived little in respectable society--he contrived at
length to explain his wish to be admitted to a conference with Miss
Ashton upon the subject of their approaching union. Sir William and
his son looked at Lady Ashton, who replied with the greatest composure,
"That Lucy would wait upon Mr. Hayston directly. I hope," she added with
a smile, "that as Lucy is very young, and has been lately trepanned into
an engagement of which she is now heartily ashamed, our dear Bucklaw
will excuse her wish that I should be present at their interview?"

"In truth, my dear lady," said Bucklaw, "it is the very thing that
I would have desired on my own account; for I have been so little
accustomed to what is called gallantry, that I shall certainly fall into
some cursed mistake unless I have the advantage of your ladyship as an
interpreter."

It was thus that Bucklaw, in the perturbation of his embarrassment upon
this critical occasion, forgot the just apprehensions he had entertained
of Lady Ashton's overbearing ascendency over her daughter's mind, and
lost an opportunity of ascertaining, by his own investigation, the real
state of Lucy's feelings.

The other gentlemen left the room, and in a shrot time Lady Ashton,
followed by her daughter, entered the apartment. She appeared, as he had
seen her on former occasions, rather composed than agitated; but a nicer
judge than he could scarce have determined whether her calmness was that
of despair or of indifference. Bucklaw was too much agitated by his own
feelings minutely to scrutinise those of the lady. He stammered out an
unconnected address, confounding together the two or three topics to
which it related, and stopt short before he brought it to any regular
conclusion. Miss Ashton listened, or looked as if she listened, but
returned not a single word in answer, continuing to fix her eyes on
a small piece of embroidery on which, as if by instinct or habit, her
fingers were busily employed. Lady Ashton sat at some distance, almost
screened from notice by the deep embrasure of the window in which she
had placed her chair. From this she whispered, in a tone of voice
which, though soft and sweet, had something in it of admonition, if not
command: "Lucy, my dear, remember--have you heard what Bucklaw has been
saying?"

The idea of her mother's presence seemed to have slipped from the
unhappy girl's recollection. She started, dropped her needle, and
repeated hastily, and almost in the same breath, the contradictory
answers: "Yes, madam--no, my lady--I beg pardon, I did not hear."

"You need not blush, my love, and still less need you look so pale and
frightened," said Lady Ashton, coming forward; "we know that maiden's
ears must be slow in receiving a gentleman's language; but you must
remember Mr. Hayston speaks on a subject on which you have long since
agreed to give him a favourable hearing. You know how much your father
and I have our hearts set upon an event so extremely desirable."

In Lady Ashton's voice, a tone of impressive, and even stern, innuendo
was sedulously and skilfully concealed under an appearance of the most
affectionate maternal tenderness. The manner was for Bucklaw, who was
easily enough imposed upon; the matter of the exhortation was for the
terrified Lucy, who well knew how to interpret her mother's hints,
however skilfully their real purport might be veiled from general
observation.

Miss Ashton sat upright in her chair, cast round her a glance in which
fear was mingled with a still wilder expression, but remained perfectly
silent. Bucklaw, who had in the mean time paced the room to and fro,
until he had recovered his composure, now stopped within two or three
yards of her chair, and broke out as follows: "I believe I have been a
d--d fool, Miss Ashton; I have tried to speak to you as people tell me
young ladies like to be talked to, and I don't think you comprehend
what I have been saying; and no wonder, for d--n me if I understand it
myself! But, however, once for all, and in broad Scotch, your father and
mother like what is proposed, and if you can take a plain young fellow
for your husband, who will never cross you in anything you have a mind
to, I will place you at the head of the best establishment in the three
Lothians; you shall have Lady Girnington's lodging in the Canongate of
Edinburgh, go where you please, do what you please, and see what you
please--and that's fair. Only I must have a corner at the board-end for
a worthless old playfellow of mine, whose company I would rather want
than have, if it were not that the d--d fellow has persuaded me that I
can't do without him; and so I hope you won't except against Craigie,
although it might be easy to find much better company."

"Now, out upon you, Bucklaw," said Lady Ashton, again interposing;
"how can you think Lucy can have any objection to that blunt, honest,
good-natured creature, Captain Craigengelt?"

"Why, madam," replied Bucklaw, "as to Craigie's sincerity, honesty, and
good-nature, they are, I believe, pretty much upon a par; but that's
neither here nor there--the fellow knows my ways, and has got useful to
me, and I cannot well do without him, as I said before. But all this is
nothing to the purpose; for since I have mustered up courage to make a
plain proposal, I would fain hear Miss Ashton, from her own lips, give
me a plain answer."

"My dear Bucklaw," said Lady Ashton, "let me spare Lucy's bashfulness.
I tell you, in her presence, that she has already consented to be guided
by her father and me in this matter. Lucy, my love," she added, with
that singular combination of suavity of tone and pointed energy which we
have already noticed--"Lucy, my dearest love! speak for yourself, is it
not as I say?"

Her victim answered in a tremulous and hollow voice: "I HAVE promised to
obey you--but upon one condition."

"She means," said Lady Ashton, turning to Bucklaw, "she expects an
answer to the demand which she has made upon the man at Vienna, or
Ratisbon, or Paris--or where is he?--for restitution of the engagement
in which he had the art to involve her. You will not, I am sure, my dear
friend, think it is wrong that she should feel much delicacy upon this
head; indeed, it concerns us all."

"Perfectly right--quite fair," said Bucklaw, half humming, half speaking
the end of the old song--

     "It is best to be off wi' the old love
     Before you be on wi' the new.

But I thought," said he, pausing, "you might have had an answer six
times told from Ravenswood. D--n me, if I have not a mind to go fetch
one myself, if Miss Ashton will honour me with the commission."

"By no means," said Lady Ashton; "we have had the utmost difficulty of
preventing Douglas, for whom it would be more proper, from taking so
rash a step; and do you think we could permit you, my good friend,
almost equally dear to us, to go to a desperate man upon an errand so
desperate? In fact, all the friends of the family are of opinion, and my
dear Lucy herself ought so to think, that, as this unworthy person has
returned no answer to her letter, silence must on this, as in other
cases, be held to give consent, and a contract must be supposed to be
given up, when the party waives insisting upon it. Sir William, who
should know best, is clear upon this subject; and therefore, my dear
Lucy----"

"Madam," said Lucy, with unwonted energy, "urge me no farther; if this
unhappy engagement be restored, I have already said you shall dispose
of me as you will; till then I should commit a heavy sin in the sight
of God and man in doing what you require." "But, my love, if this man
remains obstinately silent----"

"He will NOT be silent," answered Lucy; "it is six weeks since I sent
him a double of my former letter by a sure hand."

"You have not--you could not--you durst not," said Lady Ashton, with
violence inconsistent with the tone she had intended to assume; but
instantly correcting herself, "My dearest Lucy," said she, in her
sweetest tone of expostulation, "how could you think of such a thing?"

"No matter," said Bucklaw; "I respect Miss Ashton for her sentiments,
and I only wish I had been her messenger myself."

"And pray how long, Miss Ashton," said her mother, ironically, "are
we to wait the return of your Pacolet--your fairy messenger--since our
humble couriers of flesh and blood could not be trusted in this matter?"

"I have numbered weeks, days, hours, and minutes," said Miss Ashton;
"within another week I shall have an answer, unless he is dead. Till
that time, sir," she said, addressing Bucklaw, "let me be thus far
beholden to you, that you will beg my mother to forbear me upon this
subject."

"I will make it my particular entreaty to Lady Ashton," said Bucklaw.
"By my honour, madam, I respect your feelings; and, although the
prosecution of this affair be rendered dearer to me than ever, yet, as
I am a gentleman, I would renounce it, were it so urged as to give you a
moment's pain."

"Mr. Hayston, I think, cannot comprehend that," said Lady Ashton,
looking pale with anger, "when the daughter's happiness lies in the
bosom of the mother. Let me ask you, Miss Ashton, in what terms your
last letter was couched?"

"Exactly in the same, madam," answered Lucy, "which you dictated on a
former occasion."

"When eight days have elapsed, then," said her mother, resuming her tone
of tenderness, "we shall hope, my dearest love, that you will end this
suspense."

"Miss Ashton must not be hurried, madam," said Bucklaw, whose bluntness
of feeling did not by any means arise from want of good-nature;
"messengers may be stopped or delayed. I have known a day's journey
broke by the casting of a foreshoe. Stay, let me see my calendar: the
twentieth day from this is St. Jude's, and the day before I must be at
Caverton Edge, to see the match between the Laird of Kittlegirth's black
mare and Johnston the meal-monger's four-year-old-colt; but I can ride
all night, or Craigie can bring me word how the match goes; and I hope,
in the mean time, as I shall not myself distress Miss Ashton with any
further importunity, that your ladyship yourself, and Sir William, and
Colonel Douglas will have the goodness to allow her uninterrupted time
for making up her mind."

"Sir," said Miss Ashton, "you are generous."

"As for that, madam," answered Bucklaw, "I only pretend to be a plain,
good-humoured young fellow, as I said before, who will willingly make you
happy if you will permit him, and show him how to do so." Having said
this, he saluted her with more emotion than was consistent with
his usual train of feeling, and took his leave; Lady Ashton, as she
accompanied him out of the apartment, assuring him that her daughter did
full justice to the sincerity of his attachment, and requesting him to
see Sir William before his departure, "since," as she said, with a keen
glance reverting towards Lucy, "against St. Jude's day, we must all be
ready to SIGN AND SEAL."

"To sign and seal!" echoed Lucy, in a muttering tone, as the door of the
apartment closed--"to sign and seal--to do and die!" and, clasping her
extenuated hands together, she sunk back on the easy-chair she occupied,
in a state resembling stupor.

From this she was shortly after awakened by the boisterous entry of her
brother Henry, who clamorously reminded her of a promise to give him
two yards of carnation ribbon to make knots to his new garters. With the
most patient composure Lucy arose, and opening a little ivory cabinet,
sought out the ribbon the lad waned, measured it accurately, cut it off
into proper lengths, and knotted it into the fashion his boyish whim
required.

"Dinna shut the cabinet yet," said Henry, "for I must have some of your
silver wire to fasten the bells to my hawk's jesses,--and yet the new
falcon's not worth them neither; for do you know, after all the plague
we had to get her from an eyrie, all the way at Posso, in Mannor Water,
she's going to prove, after all, nothing better than a rifler: she just
wets her singles in the blood of the partridge, and then breaks away,
and lets her fly; and what good can the poor bird do after that, you
know, except pine and die in the first heather-cow or whin-bush she can
crawl into?"

"Right, Henry--right--very right," said Luch, mournfully, holding the
boy fast by the hand, after she had given him the wire he wanted; "but
there are more riflers in the world than your falcon, and more wounded
birds that seek but to die in quiet, that can find neither brake nor
whin-bush to hide their head in."

"Ah! that's some speech out of your romances," said the boy; "and Sholto
says they have turned your head. But I hear Norman whistling to the
hawk; I must go fasten on the jesses."

And he scampered away with the thoughtless gaiety of boyhood, leaving
his sister to the bitterness of her own reflections.

"It is decreed," she said, "that every living creature, even those who
owe me most kindness, are to shun me, and leave me to those by whom I am
beset. It is just it should be thus. Alone and uncounselled, I involved
myself in these perils; alone and uncounselled, I must extricate myself
or die."




CHAPTER XXX.

     What doth ensue
     But moody and dull melancholy,
     Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,
     And at her heel, a huge infectious troop
     Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life?

     Comedy of Errors.

AS some vindication of the ease with which Bucklaw (who otherwise, as
he termed himself, was really a very good-humoured fellow) resigned his
judgment to the management of Lady Ashton, while paying his addresses
to her daughter, the reader must call to mind the strict domestic
discipline which, at this period, was exercised over the females of a
Scottish family.

The manners of the country in this, as in many other respects, coincided
with those of France before the Revolution. Young women of the higher
rank seldom mingled in society until after marriage, and, both in law
and fact, were held to be under the strict tutelage of their parents,
who were too apt to enforce the views for their settlement in life
without paying any regard to the inclination of the parties chiefly
interested. On such occasions, the suitor expected little more from his
bride than a silent acquiescence in the will of her parents; and as few
opportunities of acquaintance, far less of intimacy, occurred, he made
his choice by the outside, as the lovers in the Merchant of Venice
select the casket, contented to trust to chance the issue of the lottery
in which he had hazarded a venture.

It was not therefore surprising, such being the general manners of the
age, that Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw, whom dissipated habits had detached
in some degree from the best society, should not attend particularly to
those feelings in his elected bride to which many men of more sentiment,
experience, and reflection would, in all probability, have been equally
indifferent. He knew what all accounted the principal point, that her
parents and friends, namely, were decidedly in his favour, and that
there existed most powerful reasons for their predilection.

In truth, the conduct of the Marquis of A----, since Ravenswood's
departure, had been such as almost to bar the possibility of his
kinsman's union with Lucy Ashton. The Marquis was Ravenswood's sincere
but misjudging friend; or rather, like many friends and patrons,
he consulted what he considered to be his relation's true interest,
although he knew that in doing so he run counter to his inclinations.

The Marquis drove on, therefore, with the plentitude of ministerial
authority, an appeal to the British House of Peers against those
judgments of the courts of law by which Sir William became possessed of
Ravenswood's hereditary property. As this measure, enforced with all the
authority of power, was new in Scottish judicial proceedings, though now
so frequently resorted to, it was exclaimed against by the lawyers
on the opposite side of politics, as an interference with the civil
judicature of the country, equally new, arbitrary, and tyrannical. And
if it thus affected even strangers connected with them only by political
party, it may be guessed what the Ashton family themselves said
and thought under so gross a dispensation. Sir William, still more
worldly-minded than he was timid, was reduced to despair by the loss
by which he was threatened. His son's haughtier spirit was exalted into
rage at the idea of being deprived of his expected patrimony. But to
Lady Ashton's yet more vindictive temper the conduct of Ravenswood, or
rather of his patron, appeared to be an offence challenging the deepest
and most immortal revenge. Even the quiet and confiding temper of Lucy
herself, swayed by the opinions expressed by all around her, could not
but consider the conduct of Ravenswood as precipitate, and even unkind.
"It was my father," she repeated with a sigh, "who welcomed him to this
place, and encouraged, or at least allowed, the intimacy between us.
Should he not have remembered this, and requited it with at least some
moderate degree of procrastination in the assertion of his own alleged
rights? I would have forfeited for him double the value of these lands,
which he pursues with an ardour that shows he has forgotten how much I
am implicated in the matter."

Lucy, however, could only murmur these things to herself, unwilling to
increase the prejudices against her lover entertained by all around
her, who exclaimed against the steps pursued on his account as illegal,
vexatious, and tyrannical, resembling the worst measures in the worst
times of the worst Stuarts, and a degradation of Scotland, the decisions
of whose learned judges were thus subjected to the review of a court
composed indeed of men of the highest rank, and who were not trained to
the study of any municipal law, and might be supposed specially to hold
in contempt that of Scotland. As a natural consequence of the alleged
injustice meditated towards her father, every means was restored to, and
every argument urged to induce Miss Ashton to break off her engagement
with Ravenswood, as being scandalous, shameful, and sinful, formed with
the mortal enemy of her family, and calculated to add bitterness to the
distress of her parents.

Lucy's spirit, however, was high, and, although unaided and alone,
she could have borne much: she could have endured the repinings of her
father; his murmurs against what he called the tyrannical usage of the
ruling party; his ceaseless charges of ingratitude against Ravenswood;
his endless lectures on the various means by which contracts may be
voided an annulled; his quotations from the civil, municipal, and the
canon law; and his prelections upon the patria potestas.

She might have borne also in patience, or repelled with scorn, the
bitter taunts and occasional violence of her brother, Colonel Douglas
Ashton, and the impertinent and intrusive interference of other friends
and relations. But it was beyond her power effectually to withstand or
elude the constant and unceasing persecution of Lady Ashton, who, laying
every other wish aside, had bent the whol efforts of her powerful
mind to break her daughter's contract with Ravenswood, and to place
a perpetual bar between the lovers, by effecting Lucy's union with
Bucklaw. Far more deeply skilled than her husband in the recesses of the
human heart, she was aware that in this way she might strike a blow of
deep and decisive vengeance upon one whom she esteemed as her mortal
enemy; nor did she hesitate at raising her arm, although she knew that
the wound must be dealt through the bosom of her daughter. With this
stern and fixed purpose, she sounded every deep and shallow of her
daughter's soul, assumed alternately every disguise of manner which
could serve her object, and prepared at leisure every species of dire
machinery by which the human mind can be wrenched from its settled
determination. Some of these were of an obvious description, and require
only to be cursorily mentioned; others were characteristic of the time,
the country, and the persons engaged in this singular drama.

It was of the last consequence that all intercourse betwixt the lovers
should be stopped, and, by dint of gold and authority, Lady Ashton
contrived to possess herself of such a complete command of all who were
placed around her daughter, that, if fact, no leaguered fortress was
ever more completely blockaded; while, at the same time, to all outward
appearance Miss Ashton lay under no restriction. The verge of her
parents' domains became, in respect to her, like the viewless and
enchanted line drawn around a fairy castle, where nothing unpermitted
can either enter from without or escape from within. Thus every letter,
in which Ravenswood conveyed to Lucy Ashton the indispensable reasons
which detained him abroad, and more than one note which poor Lucy had
addressed to him through what she thought a secure channel, fell into
the hands of her mother. It could not be but that the tenor of these
intercepted letters, especially those of Ravenswood, should contain
something to irritate the passions and fortify the obstinacy of her into
whose hands they fell; but Lady Ashton's passions were too deep-rooted
to require this fresh food. She burnt the papers as regularly as she
perused them; and as they consumed into vapour and tinder, regarded them
with a smile upon her compressed lips, and an exultation in her steady
eye, which showed her confidence that the hopes of the writers should
soon be rendered equally unsubstantial.

It usually happens that fortune aids the machinations of those who are
prompt to avail themselves of every chance that offers. A report was
wafted from the continent, founded, like others of the same sort, upon
many plausible circumstances, but without any real basis, stating the
Master of Ravenswood to be on the eve of marriage with a foreign lady
of fortune and distinction. This was greedily caught up by both the
political parties, who were at once struggling for power and for popular
favour, and who seized, as usual, upon the most private circumstances
in the lives of each other's partisans t convert them into subjects of
political discussion.

The Marquis of A---- gave his opinion aloud and publicly, not indeed in
the coarse terms ascribed to him by Captain Craigengelt, but in a manner
sufficiently offensive to the Ashtons. "He thought the report," he said,
"highly probably, and heartily wished it might be true. Such a match
was fitter and far more creditable for a spirited young fellow than a
marriage with the daughter of an old Whig lawyer, whose chicanery had so
nearly ruined his father."

The other party, of course, laying out of view the opposition which the
Master of Ravenswood received from Miss Ashton's family, cried shame
upon his fickleness and perfidy, as if he had seduced the young lady
into an engagement, and wilfully and causelessly abandoned her for
another.

Sufficient care was taken that this report should find its way to
Ravenswood Castle through every various channel, Lady Ashton being
well aware that the very reiteration of the same rumour, from so many
quarters, could not but give it a semblance of truth. By some it was
told as a piece of ordinary news, by some communicated as serious
intelligence; now it was whispered to Lucy Ashton's ear in the tone of
malignant pleasantry, and now transmitted to her as a matter of grave
and serious warning.

Even the boy henry was made the instrument of adding to his sister's
torments. One morning he rushed into the room with a willow branch in
his hand, which he told her had arrived that instant from Germany for
her special wearing. Lucy, as we have seen, was remarkably fond of
her younger brother, and at that moment his wanton and thoughtless
unkindness seemed more keenly injurious than even the studied insults of
her elder brother. Her grief, however, had no shade of resentment; she
folded her arms about the boy's neck, and saying faintly, "Poor Henry!
you speak but what they tell you" she burst into a flood of unrestrained
tears. The boy was moved, notwithstanding the thoughtlessness of his age
and character. "The devil take me," said he, "Lucy, if I fetch you any
more of these tormenting messages again; for I like you better," said
he, kissing away the tears, "than the whole pack of them; and you shall
have my grey pony to ride on, and you shall canter him if you like--ay,
and ride beyond the village, too, if you have a mind."

"Who told you," said Lucy, "that I am not permitted to ride where I
please?"

"That's a secret," said the boy; "but you will find you can never ride
beyond the village but your horse will cast a she, or fall lame, or the
cattle bell will ring, or something will happen to bring you back. But
if I tell you more of these things, Douglas will nto get me the pair of
colours they have promised me, and so good-morrow to you."

This dialogue plunged Lucy in still deeper dejection, as it tended to
show her plainly what she had for some time suspected, that she was
little better than a prisoner at large in her father's house. We have
described her in the outset of our story as of a romantic disposition,
delighting in tales of love and wonder, and readily identifying herself
with the situation of those legendary heroines with whose adventures,
for want of better reading, her memory had become stocked. The fairy
wand, with which in her solitude she had delighted to raise visions of
enchantment, became now the rod of a magician, the bond slave of evil
genii, serving only to invoke spectres at which the exorcist trembled.
She felt herself the object of suspicion, of scorn, of dislike at least,
if not of hatred, to her own family; and it seemed to her that she was
abandoned by the very person on whose account she was exposed to
the enmity of all around her. Indeed, the evidence of Ravenswood's
infidelity began to assume every day a more determined character.
A soldier of fortune, of the name of Westenho, an old familiar of
Craigengelt's, chanced to arrive from abroad about this time. The worthy
Captain, though without any precise communication with Lady Ashton,
always acted most regularly and sedulously in support of her plans,
and easily prevailed upon his friend, by dint of exaggeration of real
circumstances and coming of others, to give explicit testimony to the
truth of Ravenswood's approaching marriage.

Thus beset on all hands, and in a manner reduced to despair, Lucy's
temper gave way under the pressure of constant affliction and
persecution. She became gloomy and abstracted, and, contrary to her
natural and ordinary habit of mind, sometimes turned with spirit, and
even fierceness, on those by whom she was long and closely annoyed. Her
health also began to be shaken, and her hectic cheek and wandering
eye gave symptoms of what is called a fever upon the spirits. In most
mothers this would have moved compassion; but Lady Ashton, compact and
firm of purpose, saw these waverings of health and intellect with no
greater sympathy than that with which the hostile engineer regards the
towers of a beleaguered city as they reel under the discharge of his
artillery; or rather, she considered these starts and inequalities of
temper as symptoms of Lucy's expiring resolution; as the angler, by the
throes and convulsive exertions of the fish which he has hooked,
becomes aware that he soon will be able to land him. To accelerate
the catastrophe in the present case, Lady Ashton had recourse to an
expedient very consistent with the temper and credulity of those times,
but which the reader will probably pronounce truly detestable and
diabolical.




CHAPTER XXXI.

     In which a witch did dwell, in loathly weeds,
     And wilful want, all careless of her deeds;
     So choosing solitary to abide,
     Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deeds
     And hellish arts from people she might hide,
     And hurt far off, unknown, whome'er she envied.

     Faerie Queene.

THE health of Lucy Ashton soon required the assistance of a person more
skilful in the office of a sick-nurse than the female domestics of the
family. Ailsie Gourlay, sometimes called the Wise Woman of Bowden, was
the person whom, for her own strong reasons, Lady Ashton selected as an
attendant upon her daughter.

This woman had acquired a considerable reputation among the ignorant by
the pretended cures which she performed, especially in "oncomes," as
the Scotch call them, or mysterious diseases, which baffle the regular
physician. Her pharmacopoeia consisted partly of herbs selected in
planetary hours, partly of words, signs, and charms, which sometimes,
perhaps, produced a favourable influence upon the imagination of her
patients. Such was the avowed profession of Luckie Gourlay, which, as
may well be supposed, was looked upon with a suspicious eye, not only
by her neighbours, but even by the clergy of the district. In
private, however, she traded more deeply in the occult sciences; for,
notwithstanding the dreadful punishments inflicted upon the supposed
crime of witchcraft, there wanted not those who, steeled by want and
bitterness of spirit, were willing to adopt the hateful and dangerous
character, for the sake of the influence which its terrors enabled them
to exercise in the vicinity, and the wretched emolument which they could
extract by the practice of their supposed art.

Ailsie Gourlay was not indeed fool enough to acknowledge a compact with
the Evil One, which would have been a swift and ready road to the stake
and tar-barrel. Her fairy, she said, like Caliban's, was a harmless
fairy. Nevertheless, she "spaed fortunes," read dreams, composed
philtres, discovered stolen goods, and made and dissolved matches as
successfully as if, according to the belief of the whole neighbourhood,
she had been aided in those arts by Beelzebub himself. The worst of the
pretenders to these sciences was, that they were generally persons who,
feeling themselves odious to humanity, were careless of what they did
to deserve the public hatred. Real crimes were often committed under
pretence of magical imposture; and it somewhat relieves the disgust
with which we read, in the criminal records, the conviction of
these wretches, to be aware that many of them merited, as poisoners,
suborners, and diabolical agents in secret domestic crimes, the severe
fate to which they were condemned for the imaginary guilt of witchcraft.

Such was Aislie Gourlay, whom, in order to attain the absolute
subjugation of Lucy Ashton's mind, her mother thought it fitting to
place near her person. A woman of less consequence than Lady Ashton
had not dared to take such a step; but her high rank and strength of
character set her above the censure of the world, and she was allowed to
have selected for her daughter's attendant the best and most experienced
sick-nurse and "mediciner" in the neighbourhood, where an inferior
person would have fallen under the reproach of calling in the assistance
of a partner and ally of the great Enemy of mankind.

The beldam caught her cue readily and by innuendo, without giving
Lady Ashton the pain of distinct explanation. She was in many respects
qualified for the part she played, which indeed could not be efficiently
assumed without some knowledge of the human heart and passions. Dame
Gourlay perceived that Lucy shuddered at her external appearance, which
we have already described when we found her in the death-chamber of
blind Alice; and while internally she hated the poor girl for the
involuntary horror with which she saw she was regarded, she commenced
her operations by endeavouring to efface or overcome those prejudices
which, in her heart, she resented as mortal offences. This was easily
done, for the hag's external ugliness was soon balanced by a show of
kindness and interest, to which Lucy had of late been little accustomed;
her attentive services and real skill gained her the ear, if not the
confidence, of her patient; and under pretence of diverting the solitude
of a sick-room, she soon led her attention captive by the legends in
which she was well skilled, and to which Lucy's habit of reading and
reflection induced her to "lend an attentive ear." Dame Gourlay's tales
were at first of a mild and interesting character--

     Of fays that nightly dance upon the wold,
     And lovers doom'd to wander and to weep,
     And castles high, where wicked wizards keep
     Their captive thralls.

Gradually, however, they assumed a darker and more mysterious character,
and became such as, told by the midnight lamp, and enforced by the
tremulous tone, the quivering and livid lip, the uplifted skinny
forefinger, and the shaking head of the blue-eyed hag, might have
appalled a less credulous imagination in an age more hard of belief. The
old Sycorax saw her advantage, and gradually narrowed her magic circle
around the devoted victim on whose spirit she practised. Her legends
began to relate to the fortunes of the Ravenswood family, whose ancient
grandeur and portentous authority credulity had graced with so many
superstitious attributes. The story of the fatal fountain was narrated
at full length, and with formidable additions, by the ancient sibyl. The
prophecy, quoted by Caleb, concerning the dead bride who was to be won
by the last of the Ravenswoods, had its own mysterious commentary;
and the singular circumstance of the apparition seen by the Master of
Ravenswood in the forest, having partly transpired through his
hasty inquiries in the cottage of Old Alice, formed a theme for many
exaggerations.

Lucy might have despised these tales if they had been related concerning
another family, or if her own situation had been less despondent. But
circumstanced as she was, the idea that an evil fate hung over her
attachment became predominant over her other feelings; and the gloom
of superstition darkened a mind already sufficiently weakened by
sorrow, distress, uncertainty, and an oppressive sense of desertion and
desolation. Stories were told by her attendant so closely resembling her
own in their circumstances, that she was gradually led to converse upon
such tragic and mystical subjects with the beldam, and to repose a sort
of confidence in the sibyl, whom she still regarded with involuntary
shuddering. Dame Gourlay knew how to avail herself of this imperfect
confidence. She directed Lucy's thoughts to the means of inquiring into
futurity--the surest mode perhaps, of shaking the understanding and
destroying the spirits. Omens were expounded, dreams were interpreted,
and other tricks of jugglery perhaps resorted to, by which the pretended
adepts of the period deceived and fascinated their deluded followers. I
find it mentioned in the articles of distay against Ailsie Gourlay--for
it is some comfort to know that the old hag was tried, condemned, and
burned on the top of North Berwick Law, by sentence of a commission
from the privy council--I find, I say, it was charged against her, among
other offences, that she had, by the aid and delusions of Satan, shown
to a young person of quality, in a mirror glass, a gentleman then
abroad, to whom the said young person was betrothed, and who appeared in
the vision to be in the act of bestowing his hand upon another lady. But
this and some other parts of the record appear to have been studiously
left imperfect in names and dates, probably out of regard to the honour
of the families concerned. If Dame Gourlay was able actually to play
off such a piece of jugglery, it is clear she must have had better
assistance to practise the deception than her own skill or funds could
supply. Meanwhile, this mysterious visionary traffic had its usual
effect in unsettling Miss Ashton's mind. Her temper became unequal,
her health decayed daily, her manners grew moping, melancholy,
and uncertain. Her father, guessing partly at the cause of these
appearances, made a point of banishing Dame Gourlay from the castle;
but the arrow was shot, and was rankling barb-deep in the side of the
wounded deer.

It was shortly after the departure of this woman, that Lucy Ashton,
urged by her parents, announced to them, with a vivacity by which they
were startled, "That she was conscious heaven and earth and hell had set
themselves against her union with Ravenswood; still her contract," she
said, "was a binding contract, and she neither would nor could resign
it without the consent of Ravenswood. Let me be assured," she concluded,
"that he will free me from my engagement, and dispose of me as you
please, I care not how. When the diamonds are gone, what signifies the
casket?"

The tone of obstinacy with which this was said, her eyes flashing
with unnatural light, and her hands firmly clenched, precluded the
possibility of dispute; and the utmost length which Lady Ashton's art
could attain, only got her the privilege of dictating the letter, by
which her daughter required to know of Ravenswood whether he intended to
abide by or to surrender what she termed "their unfortunate engagement."
Of this advantage Lady Ashton so far and so ingeniously availed herself
that, according to the wording of the letter, the reader would have
supposed Lucy was calling upon her lover to renounce a contract which
was contrary to the interests and inclinations of both. Not trusting
even to this point of deception, Lady Ashton finally determined to
suppress the letter altogether, in hopes that Lucy's impatience would
induce her to condemn Ravenswood unheard and in absence. In this she was
disappointed. The time, indeed, had long elapsed when an answer should
have been received from the continent. The faint ray of hope which still
glimmered in Lucy's mind was well nigh extinguished. But the idea never
forsook her that her letter might not have been duly forwarded. One of
her mother's new machinations unexpectedly furnished her with the means
of ascertaining what she most desired to know.

The female agent of hell having been dismissed from the castle, Lady
Ashton, who wrought by all variety of means, resolved to employ, for
working the same end on Lucy's mind, an agent of a very different
character. This was no other than the Reverent Mr. Bide-the-Bent, a
presbyterian clergyman, formerly mentioned, of the very strictest
order and the most rigid orthodoxy, whose aid she called in, upon the
principle of the tyrant in the in the tragedy:

     I'll have a priest shall preach her from her faith,
     And make it sin not to renounce that vow
     Which I'd have broken.

But Lady Ashton was mistaken in the agent she had selected. His
prejudices, indeed, were easily enlisted on her side, and it was no
difficult matter to make him regard with horror the prospect of a union
betwixt the daughter of a God-fearing, professing, and Presbyterian
family of distinction and the heir of a bloodthirsty prelatist and
persecutor, the hands of whose fathers had been dyed to the wrists in
the blood of God's saints. This resembled, in the divine's opinion, the
union of a Moabitish stranger with a daughter of Zion. But with all
the more severe prejudices and principles of his sect, Bide-the-Bent
possessed a sound judgment, and had learnt sympathy even in that very
school of persecution where the heart is so frequently hardened. In a
private interview with Miss Ashton, he was deeply moved by her distress,
and could not but admit the justice of her request to be permitted a
direct communication with Ravenswood upon the subject of their solemn
contract. When she urged to him the great uncertainty under which she
laboured whether her letter had been ever forwarded, the old man paced
the room with long steps, shook his grey head, rested repeatedly for a
space on his ivory-headed staff, and, after much hesitation, confessed
that he thought her doubts so reasonable that he would himself aid in
the removal of them.