In the mean time the party pursued their route joyfully.  Having once taken his resolution, the Master of Ravenswood was not of a character to hesitate or pause upon it.  He abandoned himself to the pleasure he felt in Miss Ashton’s company, and displayed an assiduous gallantry which approached as nearly to gaiety as the temper of his mind and state of his family permitted.  The Lord Keeper was much struck with his depth of observation, and the unusual improvement which he had derived from his studies.  Of these accomplishments Sir William Ashton’s profession and habits of society rendered him an excellent judge; and he well knew how to appreciate a quality to which he himself was a total stranger—­the brief and decided dauntlessness of the Master of Ravenswood’s fear.  In his heart the Lord Keeper rejoiced at having conciliated an adversary so formidable, while, with a mixture of pleasure and anxiety, he anticipated the great things his young companion might achieve, were the breath of court-favour to fill his sails.

“What could she desire,” he thought, his mind always conjuring up opposition in the person of Lady Ashton to his new prevailing wish—­“what could a woman desire in a match more than the sopiting of a very dangerous claim, and the alliance of a son-in-law, noble, brave, well-gifted, and highly connected; sure to float whenever the tide sets his way; strong, exactly where we are weak, in pedigree and in the temper of a swordsman?  Sure, no reasonable woman would hesitate.  But alas——!” Here his argument was stopped by the consciousness that Lady Ashton was not always reasonable, in his sense of the word.  “To prefer some clownish Merse laird to the gallant young nobleman, and to the secure possession of Ravenswood upon terms of easy compromise—­it would be the act of a madwoman!”

Thus pondered the veteran politician, until they reached Bittlebrains House, where it had been previously settled they were to dine and repose themselves, and prosecute their journey in the afternoon.

They were received with an excess of hospitality; and the most marked attention was offered to the Master of Ravenswood, in particular, by their noble entertainers.  The truth was, that Lord Bittlebrains had obtained his peerage by a good deal of plausibility, an art of building up a character for wisdom upon a very trite style of commonplace eloquence, a steady observation of the changes of the times, and the power of rendering certain political services to those who could best reward them.  His lady and he, not feeling quite easy under their new honours, to which use had not adapted their feelings, were very desirous to procure the fraternal countenance of those who were born denizens of the regions into which they had been exalted from a lower sphere.  The extreme attention which they paid to the Master of Ravenswood had its usual effect in exalting his importance in the eyes of the Lord Keeper, who, although he had a reasonable degree of contempt for Lord Bittlebrains’s general parts, entertained a high opinion of the acuteness of his judgment in all matters of self-interest.