to him than ceremony."

There was no room to retreat. The Master of Ravenswood led the way,
continuing to keep hold of the lady's bridle to prevent her horse
from starting at some unexpected explosion of thunder. He was not so
bewildered in his own hurried reflections but that he remarked, that the
deadly paleness which had occupied her neck and temples, and such of her
features as the riding-mask left exposed, gave place to a deep and rosy
suffusion; and he felt with embarrassment that a flush was by tacit
sympathy excited in his own cheeks. The stranger, with watchfulness
which he disguised under apprehensions of the safety of his daughter,
continued to observe the expression of the Master's countenance as
they ascended the hill to Wolf's Crag. When they stood in front of
that ancient fortress, Ravenswood's emotions were of a very complicated
description; and as he led the way into the rude courtyard, and hallooed
to Caleb to give attendance, there was a tone of sternness, almost of
fierceness, which seemed somewhat alien from the courtesies of one who
is receiving honoured guests.

Caleb came; and not the paleness of the fair stranger at the first
approach of the thunder, nor the paleness of any other person, in any
other circumstances whatever, equalled that which overcame the thin
cheeks of the disconsolate seneschal when he beheld this accession
of guests to the castle, and reflected that the dinner hour was fast
approaching. "Is he daft?" he muttered to himself;--"is he clean daft
a'thegither, to bring lords and leddies, and a host of folk behint them,
and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon
for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt,
observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till
mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant."

"Silence, Balderstone!" said Ravenswood, sternly; "your folly is
unseasonable. Sir and madam," he said, turning to his guests, "this old
man, and a yet older and more imbecile female domestic, form my whole
retinue. Our means of refreshing you are more scanty than even so
miserable a retinue, and a dwelling so dilapidated, might seem to
promise you; but, such as they may chance to be, you may command them."

The elder stranger, struck with the ruined and even savage appearance of
the Tower, rendered still more disconsolate by the lowering and gloomy
sky, and perhaps not altogether unmoved