Chapter 28 - Page 2

answered Bucklaw; "but I care not a penny for her tocher; I
have enough of my own."

"And the mother, that loves you like her own child?"

"Better than some of her children, I believe," said Bucklaw, "or there
would be little love wared on the matter."

"And Colonel Sholto Douglas Ashton, who desires the marriage above all
earthly things?"

"Because," said Bucklaw, "he expects to carry the county of ---- through
my interest."

"And the father, who is as keen to see the match concluded as ever I
have been to win a main?"

"Ay," said Bucklaw, in the same disparaging manner, "it lies with Sir
William's policy to secure the next best match, since he cannot barter
his child to save the great Ravenswood estate, which the English House
of Lords are about to wrench out of his clutches."

"What say you to the young lady herself?" said Craigengelt; "the finest
young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she
was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement
with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil's in ye,
when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want."

"I'll tell you my meaning in a word," answered Bucklaw, getting up and
walking through the room; "I want to know what the devil is the cause of
Miss Ashton's changing her mind so suddenly?"

"And what need you care," said Craigengelt, "since the change is in your
favour?"

"I'll tell you what it is," returned his patron, "I never knew much of
that sort of fine ladies, and I believe they may be as capricious as the
devil; but there is something in Miss Ashton's change a devilish deal
too sudden and too serious for a mere flisk of her own. I'll be bound,
Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human
mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bit, martingales, and
cavessons for young colts."

"And if that were not the case," said Craigengelt, "how the devil should
we ever get them into training at all?"

"And that's true too," said Bucklaw, suspending his march through the
dining-room, and leaning upon the back of a chair. "And besides,
here's Ravenswood in the way still, do you think he'll give up Lucy's
engagement?"

"To be sure he will," answered Craigengelt; "what good can it do him to
refuse, since he wishes to marry another woman and she another man?"

"And you believe seriously," said Bucklaw, "that he is going to marry
the foreign lady we heard