Chapter 14 - Page 2

up-bye there; and Sir William might just stitch
your auld barony to her gown-sleeve, and he wad sune cuitle another out
o' somebody else, sic a lang head as he has."

Caleb shook his head. "I wish," he said--"I wish that may answer, Mr.
Lockhard. There are auld prophecies about this house I wad like ill to
see fulfilled wi' my auld een, that has seen evil eneugh already."

"Pshaw! never mind freits," said his brother butler; "if the young folk
liked ane anither, they wad make a winsome couple. But, to say truth,
there is a leddy sits in our hall-neuk, maun have her hand in that as
weel as in every other job. But there's no harm in drinking to their
healths, and I will fill Mrs. Mysie a cup of Mr. Girder's canary."

While they thus enjoyed themselves in the kitchen, the company in
the hall were not less pleasantly engaged. So soon as Ravenswood had
determined upon giving the Lord Keeper such hospitality as he had to
offer, he deemed it incumbent on him to assume the open and courteous
brow of a well-pleased host. It has been often remarked, that when a man
commences by acting a character, he frequently ends by adopting it in
good earnest. In the course of an hour or two, Ravenswood, to his own
surprise, found himself in the situation of one who frankly does his
best to entertain welcome and honoured guests. How much of this change
in his disposition was to be ascribed to the beauty and simplicity of
Miss Ashton, to the readiness with which she accommodated herself to the
inconveniences of 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