gree and in the
temper of a swordsman? Sure, no reasonable woman would hesitate. But
alas----!" Here his argument was stopped by the consciousness that Lady
Ashton was not always reasonable, in his sense of the word. "To prefer
some clownish Merse laird to the gallant young nobleman, and to the
secure possession of Ravenswood upon terms of easy compromise--it would
be the act of a madwoman!"

Thus pondered the veteran politician, until they reached Bittlebrains
House, where it had been previously settled they were to dine and repose
themselves, and prosecute their journey in the afternoon.

They were received with an excess of hospitality; and the most marked
attention was offered to the Master of Ravenswood, in particular, by
their noble entertainers. The truth was, that Lord Bittlebrains had
obtained his peerage by a good deal of plausibility, an art of building
up a character for wisdom upon a very trite style of commonplace
eloquence, a steady observation of the changes of the times, and the
power of rendering certain political services to those who could best
reward them. His lady and he, not feeling quite easy under their new
honours, to which use had not adapted their feelings, were very desirous
to procure the fraternal countenance of those who were born denizens of
the regions into which they had been exalted from a lower sphere. The
extreme attention which they paid to the Master of Ravenswood had its
usual effect in exalting his importance in the eyes of the Lord
Keeper, who, although he had a reasonable degree of contempt for
Lord Bittlebrains's general parts, entertained a high opinion of the
acuteness of his judgment in all matters of self-interest.

"I wish Lady Ashton had seen this," was his internal reflection; "no man
knows so well as Bittlebrains on which side his bread is buttered; and
he fawns on the Master like a beggar's messan on a cook. And my lady,
too, bringing forward her beetle-browed misses to skirl and play upon
the virginals, as if she said, 'Pick and choose.' They are no more
comparable to Lucy than an owl is to a cygnet, and so they may carry
their black brows to a farther market."

The entertainment being ended, our travellers, who had still to measure
the longest part of their journey, resumed their horses; and after the
Lord Keeper, the Master, and the domestics had drunk doch-an-dorroch,
or the stirrup-cup, in the liquors adapted to their various ranks, the
cavalcade resumed its