upposed specially to hold
in contempt that of Scotland. As a natural consequence of the alleged
injustice meditated towards her father, every means was restored to, and
every argument urged to induce Miss Ashton to break off her engagement
with Ravenswood, as being scandalous, shameful, and sinful, formed with
the mortal enemy of her family, and calculated to add bitterness to the
distress of her parents.

Lucy's spirit, however, was high, and, although unaided and alone,
she could have borne much: she could have endured the repinings of her
father; his murmurs against what he called the tyrannical usage of the
ruling party; his ceaseless charges of ingratitude against Ravenswood;
his endless lectures on the various means by which contracts may be
voided an annulled; his quotations from the civil, municipal, and the
canon law; and his prelections upon the patria potestas.

She might have borne also in patience, or repelled with scorn, the
bitter taunts and occasional violence of her brother, Colonel Douglas
Ashton, and the impertinent and intrusive interference of other friends
and relations. But it was beyond her power effectually to withstand or
elude the constant and unceasing persecution of Lady Ashton, who, laying
every other wish aside, had bent the whol efforts of her powerful
mind to break her daughter's contract with Ravenswood, and to place
a perpetual bar between the lovers, by effecting Lucy's union with
Bucklaw. Far more deeply skilled than her husband in the recesses of the
human heart, she was aware that in this way she might strike a blow of
deep and decisive vengeance upon one whom she esteemed as her mortal
enemy; nor did she hesitate at raising her arm, although she knew that
the wound must be dealt through the bosom of her daughter. With this
stern and fixed purpose, she sounded every deep and shallow of her
daughter's soul, assumed alternately every disguise of manner which
could serve her object, and prepared at leisure every species of dire
machinery by which the human mind can be wrenched from its settled
determination. Some of these were of an obvious description, and require
only to be cursorily mentioned; others were characteristic of the time,
the country, and the persons engaged in this singular drama.

It was of the last consequence that all intercourse betwixt the lovers
should be stopped, and, by dint of gold and authority, Lady Ashton
contrived to possess herself of such a complete com