her situation; how much to the smooth and plausible
conversation of the Lord Keeper, remarkably gifted with those words
which win the ear, must be left to the reader's ingenuity to conjecture.
But Ravenswood was insensible to neither.

The Lord Keeper was a veteran statesman, well acquainted with courts
and cabinets, and intimate with all the various turns of public affairs
during the last eventful years of the 17th century. He could talk, from
his own knowledge, of men and events, in a way which failed not to win
attention, and had the peculiar art, while he never said a word which
committed himself, at the same time to persuade the hearer that he was
speaking without the least shadow of scrupulous caution or reserve.
Ravenswood, in spite of his prejudices and real grounds of resentment,
felt himself at once amused and instructed in listening to him, while
the statesman, whose inward feelings had at first so much impeded his
efforts to make himself known, had now regained all the ease and fluency
of a silver-tongued lawyer of the very highest order.

His daughter did not speak much, but she smiled; and what she did say
argued a submissive gentleness, and a desire to give pleasure, which,
to a proud man like Ravenswood, was more fascinating than the most
brilliant wit. Above all, he could not be observe that, whether from
gratitude or from some other motive, he himself, in his deserted and
unprovided hall, was as much the object of respectful attention to his
guests as he would have been when surrounded by all the appliances and
means of hospitality proper to his high birth. All deficiencies passed
unobserved, or, if they did not escape notice, it was to praise the
substitutes which Caleb had contrived to supply the want of the
usual accommodations. Where a smile was unavoidable, it was a very
good-humoured one, and often coupled with some well-turned compliment,
to show how much the guests esteemed the merits of their noble host,
how little they thought of the inconveniences with which they
were surrounded. I am not sure whether the pride of being found to
outbalance, in virtue of his own personal merit, all the disadvantages
of fortune, did not make as favourable an impression upon the haughty
heart of the Master of Ravenswood as the conversation of the father and
the beauty of Lucy Ashton.

The hour of repose arrived. The Keeper and his daughter retired to their
apartments, which were "decored" more properly than