eeded, 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 Ravenswood 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 her visit to Lady
Blenkensop, and set forth with the peep of morning on her return to
Scotland, using all the despatch which the state of the roads and the
mode of travelling would possibly permit.

Unhappy Lord Keeper! little was he aware what a storm was travelling
towards him in all the speed with which an old-fashioned coach and six
could possibly achieve its journey. He, like Don Gayferos, "forgot his
lady fair and true," and was only anxious about the expected visit
of the Marquis of A----. Soothfast tidings had assured him that this
nobleman was at length, and without fail, to honour his castle at one
in the afternoon, being a late dinn