ndship and unity!"

Accepting this salutation as a mark of courtesy repaid, the Lady Peveril
marshalled in person this party of her guests to the apartment, where
ample good cheer was provided for them; and had even the patience to
remain while Master Nehemiah Solsgrace pronounced a benediction of
portentous length, as an introduction to the banquet. Her presence was
in some measure a restraint on the worthy divine, whose prolusion lasted
the longer, and was the more intricate and embarrassed, that he felt
himself debarred from rounding it off by his usual alliterative petition
for deliverance from Popery, Prelacy, and Peveril of the Peak, which had
become so habitual to him, that, after various attempts to conclude with
some other form of words, he found himself at last obliged to pronounce
the first words of his usual _formula_ aloud, and mutter the rest in
such a manner as not to be intelligible even by those who stood nearest
to him.

The minister's silence was followed by all the various sounds which
announce the onset of a hungry company on a well-furnished table; and at
the same time gave the lady an opportunity to leave the apartment, and
look to the accommodation of her other company. She felt, indeed,
that it was high time to do so; and that the royalist guests might be
disposed to misapprehend, or even to resent, the prior attentions which
she had thought it prudent to offer to the Puritans.

These apprehensions were not altogether ill-founded. It was in vain that
the steward had displayed the royal standard, with its proud motto of
_Tandem Triumphans_, on one of the great towers which flanked the main
entrance of the Castle; while, from the other, floated the banner of
Peveril of the Peak, under which many of those who now approached had
fought during all the vicissitudes of civil war. It was in vain he
repeated his clamorous "Welcome, noble Cavaliers! welcome, generous
gentlemen!" There was a slight murmur amongst them, that their welcome
ought to have come from the mouth of the Colonel's lady--not from that
of a menial. Sir Jasper Cranbourne, who had sense as well as spirit and
courage, and who was aware of his fair cousin's motives, having been
indeed consulted by her upon all the arrangements which she had adopted,
saw matters were in such a state that no time ought to be lost in
conducting the guests to the banqueting apartment, where a fortunate
diversion from all these topics of rising discontent mi