She sate upon one of the disjointed stones of the ancient fountain, and seemed to watch the progress of its current, as it bubbled forth to daylight, in gay and sparkling profusion, from under the shadow of the ribbed and darksome vault, with which veneration, or perhaps remorse, had canopied its source.  To a superstitious eye, Lucy Ashton, folded in her plaided mantle, with her long hair, escaping partly from the snood and falling upon her silver neck, might have suggested the idea of the murdered Nymph of the fountain.  But Ravenswood only saw a female exquisitely beautiful, and rendered yet more so in his eyes—­how could it be otherwise?—­by the consciousness that she had placed her affections on him.  As he gazed on her, he felt his fixed resolution melting like wax in the sun, and hastened, therefore, from his concealment in the neighbouring thicket.  She saluted him, but did not arise from the stone on which she was seated.

“My madcap brother,” she said, “has left me, but I expect him back in a few minutes; for, fortunately, as anything pleases him for a minute, nothing has charms for him much longer.”

Ravenswood did not feel the power of informing Lucy that her brother meditated a distant excursion, and would not return in haste.  He sate himself down on the grass, at some little distance from Miss Ashton, and both were silent for a short space.

“I like this spot,” said Lucy at length, as if she found the silence embarrassing; “the bubbling murmur of the clear fountain, the waving of the trees, the profusion of grass and wild-flowers that rise among the ruins, make it like a scene in romance.  I think, too, I have heard it is a spot connected with the legendary lore which I love so well.”

“It has been thought,” answered Ravenswood, “a fatal spot to my family; and I have some reason to term it so, for it was here I first saw Miss Ashton; and it is here I must take my leave of her for ever.”

The blood, which the first part of this speech called into Lucy’s cheeks, was speedily expelled by its conclusion.

“To take leave of us, Master!” she exclaimed; “what can have happened to hurry you away?  I know Alice hates—­I mean dislikes my father; and I hardly understood her humour to-day, it was so mysterious.  But I am certain my father is sincerely grateful for the high service you rendered us.  Let me hope that, having won your friendship hardly, we shall not lose it lightly.”

“Lose it, Miss Ashton!” said the Master of Ravenswood.  “No; wherever my fortune calls me—­whatever she inflicts upon me—­it is your friend—­your sincere friend, who acts or suffers.  But there is a fate on me, and I must go, or I shall add the ruin of others to my own.”

“Yet do not go from us, Master,” said Lucy; and she laid her hand, in all simplicity and kindness, upon the skirt of his cloak, as if to detain him.  “You shall not part from us.  My father is powerful, he has friends that are more so than himself; do not go till you see what his gratitude will do for you.  Believe me, he is already labouring in your behalf with the council.”