Chapter 22 - Page 2

quarter the wind of Lady Ashton's wishes sate, than
he trimmed his course accordingly. "There was little to prevent Bucklaw
himself from sitting for the county; he must carry the heat--must walk
the course. Two cousins-german, six more distant kinsmen, his factor and
his chamberlain, were all hollow votes; and the Girnington interest had
always carried, betwixt love and fear, about as many more. But Bucklaw
cared no more about riding the first horse, and that sort of thing, than
he, Craigengelt, did about a game at birkie: it was a pity his interest
was not in good guidance."

All this Lady Ashton drank in with willing and attentive ears, resolving
internally to be herself the person who should take the management of
the political influence of her destined son-in-law, for the benefit of
her eldest-born, Sholto, and all other parties concerned.

When he found her ladyship thus favourably disposed, the Captain
proceeded, to use his employer's phrase, to set spurs to her resolution,
by hinting at the situation of matters at Ravenswood Castle, the long
residence which the heir of that family had made with the Lord Keeper,
and the reports which--though he would be d--d ere he gave credit to any
of them--had been idly circulated in the neighbourhood. It was not the
Captain's cue to appear himself to be uneasy on the subject of these
rumours; but he easily saw from Lady Ashton's flushed cheek, hesitating
voice, and flashing eye, that she had caught the alarm which he intended
to communicate. She had not heard from her husband so often or so
regularly as she though him bound in duty to have written, and of this
very interesting intelligence concerning his visit to the Tower of
Wolf's Crag, and the guest whom, with such cordiality, he had received
at Ravenswsood Castle, he had suffered his lady to remain altogether
ignorant, until she now learned it by the chance information of a
stranger. Such concealment approached, in her apprehension, to a
misprision, at last, of treason, if not to actual rebellion against
her matrimonial authority; and in her inward soul she did vow to take
vengeance on the Lord Keeper, as on a subject detected in meditating
revolt. Her indignation burned the more fiercely as she found herself
obliged to suppress it in presence of Lady Blenkensop, the kinswoman,
and of Craigengelt, the confidential friend, of Bucklaw, of whose
alliance she now became trebly desirous, since it occurred to her
alarmed imagination that her husband might, in his policy or timidity,
prefer that of Ravenswood.

The Captain was engineer enough to discover that the train was fired;
and therefore heard, in the course of the same day, without the least
surprise, that Lady Ashton had resolved to abridge