irds, which, though carved in oak, seemed, such was
the art of the chisel, actually to swell their throats and flutter their
wings. Several old family portraits of armed heroes of the house of
Ravenswood, together with a suit or two of old armour and some military
weapons, had given place to those of King William and Queen Mary, or
Sir Thomas Hope and Lord Stair, two distinguished Scottish lawyers. The
pictures of the Lord Keeper's father and mother were also to be seen;
the latter, sour, shrewish, and solemn, in her black hood and close
pinners, with a book of devotion in her hand; the former, exhibiting
beneath a black silk Geneva cowl, or skull-cap, which sate as close to
the head as if it had been shaven, a pinched, peevish, Puritanical set
of features, terminating in a hungry, reddish, peaked beard, forming on
the whole a countenance in the expression of which the hypocrite seemed
to contend with the miser and the knave. "And it is to make room for
such scarecrows as these," thought Ravenswood, "that my ancestors have
been torn down from the walls which they erected!" he looked at them
again, and, as he looked, the recollection of Lucy Ashton, for she
had not entered the apartment with them, seemed less lively in his
imagination. There were also two or three Dutch drolleries, as the
pictures of Ostade and Teniers were then termed, with one good painting
of the Italian school. There was, besides, a noble full-length of the
Lord Keeper in his robes of office, placed beside his lady in silk and
ermine, a haughty beauty, bearing in her looks all the pride of
the house of Douglas, from which she was descended. The painter,
notwithstanding his skill, overcome by the reality, or, perhaps, from a
suppressed sense of humour, had not been able to give the husband on the
canvas that air of awful rule and right supremacy which indicates the
full possession of domestic authority. It was obvious at the first
glance that, despite mace and gold frogs, the Lord Keeper was somewhat
henpecked. The floor of this fine saloon was laid with rich carpets,
huge fires blazed in the double chimneys, and ten silver sconces,
reflecting with their bright plates the lights which they supported,
made the whole seem as brilliant as day.

"Would you choose any refreshment, Master?" said Sir William Ashton, not
unwilling to break the awkward silence.

He received no answer, the Master being so busily engaged in marking the
various changes which had