the
Master, and walking as cautiously as if he had been treading upon eggs,
he glided back to his father, and pressed as close to him as possible.
Ravenswood, to avoid hearing the dispute betwixt the father and the
overindulged boy, thought it most polite to turn his face once more
towards the pictures, and pay no attention to what they said.

"Why do you not speak to the Master, you little fool?" said the Lord
Keeper.

"I am afraid," said Henry, in a very low tone of voice.

"Afraid, you goose!" said his father, giving him a slight shake by the
collar. "What makes you afraid?"

"What makes him to like the picture of Sir Malise Ravenswood then?" said
the boy, whispering.

"What picture, you natural?" said his father. "I used to think you only
a scapegrace, but I believe you will turn out a born idiot."

"I tell you, it is the picture of old Malise of Ravenswood, and he is as
like it as if he had loupen out of the canvas; and it is up in the old
baron's hall that the maids launder the clothes in; and it has armour,
and not a coat like the gentleman; and he has not a beard and whiskers
like the picture; and it has another kind of thing about the throat, and
no band-strings as he has; and----"

"And why should not the gentleman be like his ancestor, you silly boy?"
said the Lord Keeper.

"Ay; but if he is come to chase us all out of the castle," said the boy,
"and has twenty men at his back in disguise; and is come to say, with
a hollow voice, 'I bide my time'; and is to kill you on the hearth as
Malise did the other man, and whose blood is still to be seen!"

"Hush! nonsense!" said the Lord Keeper, not himself much pleased to hear
these disagreeable coincidences forced on his notice. "Master, here comes
Lockhard to say supper is served."

And, at the same instant, Lucy entered at another door, having changed
her dress since her return. The exquisite feminine beauty of her
countenance, now shaded only by a profusion of sunny tresses; the
sylph-like form, disencumbered of her heavy riding-skirt and mantled in
azure silk; the grace of her manner and of her smile, cleared, with
a celerity which surprised the Master himself, all the gloomy and
unfavourable thoughts which had for some time overclouded his fancy.
In those features, so simply sweet, he could trace no alliance with
the pinched visage of the peak-bearded, black-capped Puritan, or his
starched, withered spouse, with the craft expressed in the Lord Keeper