Chapter 19 - Page 2

examine
the earth of a badger, which carried him on a good way before them.

The conversation betwixt the Master and his sister, meanwhile, took
an interesting, and almost a confidential, turn. She could not help
mentioning her sense of the pain he must feel in visiting scenes so well
known to him, bearing now an aspect so different; and so gently was
her sympathy expressed, that Ravenswood felt it for a moment as a full
requital of all his misfortunes. Some such sentiment escaped him, which
Lucy heard with more of confusion than displeasure; and she may be
forgiven the imprudence of listening to such language, considering that
the situation in which she was placed by her father seemed to authorise
Ravenswood to use it. Yet she made an effort to turn the conversation,
and she succeeded; for the Master also had advanced farther than he
intended, and his conscience had instantly checked him when he found
himself on the verge of speaking of love to the daughter of Sir William
Ashton.

They now approached the hut of Old Alice, which had of late been
rendered more comfortable, and presented an appearance less picturesque,
perhaps, but far neater than before. The old woman was on her accustomed
seat beneath the weeping birch, basking, with the listless enjoyment of
age and infirmity, in the beams of the autumn sun. At the arrival of
her visitors she turned her head towards them. "I hear your step, Miss
Ashton," she said, "but the gentleman who attends you is not my lord,
your father."

"And why should you think so, Alice?" said Lucy; "or how is it possible
for you to judge so accurately by the sound of a step, on this firm
earth, and in the open air?"

"My hearing, my child, has been sharpened by my blindness, and I can now
draw conclusions from the slightest sounds, which formerly reached my
ears as unheeded as they now approach yours. Necessity is a stern but an
excellent schoolmistress, and she that has lost her sight must collect
her information from other sources."

"Well, you hear a man's step, I grant it," said Lucy; "but why, Alice,
may it not be my father's?"

"The pace of age, my love, is timid and cautious: the foot takes leave
of the earth slowly, and is planted down upon it with hesitation; it
is the hasty and determined step of youth that I now hear, and--could I
give credit to so strange a thought--I should say is was the step of a
Ravenswood."

"This is indeed," said Ravenswood, "an acuteness of organ which I could
not have credited had I not witnessed it. I am indeed the Master of
Ravenswood, Alice,--the son of your old master."

"You!" said the old