distressed family; and if he is
to be warmly and effectually befriended by the new government, who knows
but my virtue may prove its own reward?"

Thus thought Sir William Ashton, covering with no unusual self-delusion
his interested views with a hue of virtue; and having attained this
point, his fancy strayed still farther. He began to bethink himself,
"That if Ravenswood was to have a distinguished place of power and
trust, and if such a union would sopite the heavier part of his
unadjusted claims, there might be worse matches for his daughter Lucy:
the Master might be reponed against the attainder. Lord Ravenswood was
an ancient title, and the alliance would, in some measure, legitimate
his own possession of the greater part of the Master's spoils, and make
the surrender of the rest a subject of less bitter regret."

With these mingled and multifarious plans occupying his head, the Lord
Keeper availed himself of my Lord Bittlebrains's repeated invitation
to his residence, and thus came within a very few miles of Wolf's
Crag. Here he found the lord of the mansion absent, but was courteously
received by the lady, who expected her husband's immediate return. She
expressed her particular delight at seeing Miss Ashton, and appointed
the hounds to be taken out for the Lord Keeper's special amusement.
He readily entered into the proposal, as giving him an opportunity to
reconnoitre Wolf's Crag, and perhaps to make some acquaintance with the
owner, if he should be tempted from his desolate mansion by the
chase. Lockhard had his orders to endeavour on his part to make some
acquaintance with the inmates of the castle, and we have seen how he
played his part.

The accidental storm did more to further the Lord Keeper's plan of
forming a personal acquaintance with young Ravenswood than his most
sanguine expectations could have anticipated. His fear of the young
nobleman's personal resentment had greatly decreased since he considered
him as formidable from his legal claims and the means he might have of
enforcing them. But although he thought, not unreasonably, that only
desperate circumstances drove men on desperate measures, it was not
without a secret terror, which shook his heart within him, that he first
felt himself inclosed within the desolate Tower of Wolf's Crag; a place
so well fitted, from solitude and strength, to be a scene of violence
and vengeance. The stern reception at first given to them by the Master
of Rave