Chapter 30

What doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy,
Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,
And at her heel, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life?

Comedy of Errors.

AS some vindication of the ease with which Bucklaw (who otherwise, as
he termed himself, was really a very good-humoured fellow) resigned his
judgment to the management of Lady Ashton, while paying his addresses
to her daughter, the reader must call to mind the strict domestic
discipline which, at this period, was exercised over the females of a
Scottish family.

The manners of the country in this, as in many other respects, coincided
with those of France before the Revolution. Young women of the higher
rank seldom mingled in society until after marriage, and, both in law
and fact, were held to be under the strict tutelage of their parents,
who were too apt to enforce the views for their settlement in life
without paying any regard to the inclination of the parties chiefly
interested. On such occasions, the suitor expected little more from his
bride than a silent acquiescence in the will of her parents; and as few
opportunities of acquaintance, far less of intimacy, occurred, he made
his choice by the outside, as the lovers in the Merchant of Venice
select the casket, contented to trust to chance the issue of the lottery
in which he had hazarded a venture.

It was not therefore surprising, such being the general manners of the
age, that Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw, whom dissipated habits had detached
in some degree from the best society, should not attend particularly to
those feelings in his elected bride to which many men of more sentiment,
experience, and reflection would, in all probability, have been equally
indifferent. He knew what all accounted the principal point, that her
parents and friends, namely, were decidedly in his favour, and that
there existed most powerful reasons for their predilection.

In truth, the conduct of the Marquis of A----, since Ravenswood's
departure, had been such as almost to bar the possibility of his
kinsman's union with Lucy Ashton. The Marquis was Ravenswood's sincere
but misjudging friend; or rather, like many friends and patrons,
he consulted what he considered to be his relation's true interest,
although he knew that in doing so he run counter to his inclinations.

The Marquis drove on, therefore, with the plentitude of ministerial
authority, an appeal to the British House of Peers against those
judgments of the courts of law by which Sir William became possessed of
Ravenswood's hereditary property. As this measure, enforced with all the
authority of power, was new in Scottish judicial proceedings, though now
so frequently resorted to, it was