of Lady Ashton, who was at this time in Edinburgh, watching the
progress of some state-intrigue; the Lord Keeper only received society
out of policy or ostentation, and was by nature rather reserved and
unsociable; and thus no cavalier appeared to rival or to obscure the
ideal picture of chivalrous excellence which Lucy had pictured to
herself in the Master of Ravenswood.

While Lucy indulged in these dreams, she made frequent visits to old
blind Alice, hoping it would be easy to lead her to talk on the subject
which at present she had so imprudently admitted to occupy so large a
portion of her thoughts. But Alice did not in this particular gratify
her wishes and expectations. She spoke readily, and with pathetic
feeling, concerning the family in general, but seemed to observe
an especial and cautious silence on the subject of the present
representative. The little she said of him was not altogether so
favourable as Lucy had anticipated. She hinted that he was of a stern
and unforgiving character, more ready to resent than to pardon injuries;
and Lucy combined, with great alarm, the hints which she now dropped
of these dangerous qualities with Alice's advice to her father, so
emphatically given, "to beware of Ravenswood."

But that very Ravenswood, of whom such unjust suspicions had been
entertained, had, almost immediately after they had been uttered,
confuted them by saving at once her father's life and her own. Had he
nourished such black revenge as Alice's dark hints seemed to indicate,
no deed of active guilt was necessary to the full gratification of
that evil passion. He needed but to have withheld for an instant his
indispensable and effective assistance, and the object of his resentment
must have perished, without any direct aggression on his part, by a
death equally fearful and certain. She conceived, therefore, that some
secret prejudice, or the suspicions incident to age and misfortune,
had led Alice to form conclusions injurious to the character, and
irreconcilable both with the generous conduct and noble features, of the
Master of Ravenswood. And in this belief Lucy reposed her hope, and went
on weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue, as beautiful and transient
as the film of the gossamer when it is pearled with the morning dew and
glimmering to the sun.

Her father, in the mean while, as well as the Master of Ravenswood, were
making reflections, as frequent though more solid than those of Lucy,
upo