mand of all who were
placed around her daughter, that, if fact, no leaguered fortress was
ever more completely blockaded; while, at the same time, to all outward
appearance Miss Ashton lay under no restriction. The verge of her
parents' domains became, in respect to her, like the viewless and
enchanted line drawn around a fairy castle, where nothing unpermitted
can either enter from without or escape from within. Thus every letter,
in which Ravenswood conveyed to Lucy Ashton the indispensable reasons
which detained him abroad, and more than one note which poor Lucy had
addressed to him through what she thought a secure channel, fell into
the hands of her mother. It could not be but that the tenor of these
intercepted letters, especially those of Ravenswood, should contain
something to irritate the passions and fortify the obstinacy of her into
whose hands they fell; but Lady Ashton's passions were too deep-rooted
to require this fresh food. She burnt the papers as regularly as she
perused them; and as they consumed into vapour and tinder, regarded them
with a smile upon her compressed lips, and an exultation in her steady
eye, which showed her confidence that the hopes of the writers should
soon be rendered equally unsubstantial.

It usually happens that fortune aids the machinations of those who are
prompt to avail themselves of every chance that offers. A report was
wafted from the continent, founded, like others of the same sort, upon
many plausible circumstances, but without any real basis, stating the
Master of Ravenswood to be on the eve of marriage with a foreign lady
of fortune and distinction. This was greedily caught up by both the
political parties, who were at once struggling for power and for popular
favour, and who seized, as usual, upon the most private circumstances
in the lives of each other's partisans t convert them into subjects of
political discussion.

The Marquis of A---- gave his opinion aloud and publicly, not indeed in
the coarse terms ascribed to him by Captain Craigengelt, but in a manner
sufficiently offensive to the Ashtons. "He thought the report," he said,
"highly probably, and heartily wished it might be true. Such a match
was fitter and far more creditable for a spirited young fellow than a
marriage with the daughter of an old Whig lawyer, whose chicanery had so
nearly ruined his father."

The other party, of course, laying out of view the opposition which the
Master of Ravenswood re