“And the father, who is as keen to see the match concluded as ever I have been to win a main?”

“Ay,” said Bucklaw, in the same disparaging manner, “it lies with Sir William’s policy to secure the next best match, since he cannot barter his child to save the great Ravenswood estate, which the English House of Lords are about to wrench out of his clutches.”

“What say you to the young lady herself?” said Craigengelt; “the finest young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing.  I must say, the devil’s in ye, when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want.”

“I’ll tell you my meaning in a word,” answered Bucklaw, getting up and walking through the room; “I want to know what the devil is the cause of Miss Ashton’s changing her mind so suddenly?”

“And what need you care,” said Craigengelt, “since the change is in your favour?”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” returned his patron, “I never knew much of that sort of fine ladies, and I believe they may be as capricious as the devil; but there is something in Miss Ashton’s change a devilish deal too sudden and too serious for a mere flisk of her own.  I’ll be bound, Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bit, martingales, and cavessons for young colts.”

“And if that were not the case,” said Craigengelt, “how the devil should we ever get them into training at all?”

“And that’s true too,” said Bucklaw, suspending his march through the dining-room, and leaning upon the back of a chair.  “And besides, here’s Ravenswood in the way still, do you think he’ll give up Lucy’s engagement?”

“To be sure he will,” answered Craigengelt; “what good can it do him to refuse, since he wishes to marry another woman and she another man?”

“And you believe seriously,” said Bucklaw, “that he is going to marry the foreign lady we heard of?”

“You heard yourself,” answered Craigengelt, “what Captain Westenho said about it, and the great preparation made for their blythesome bridal.”

“Captain Westenho,” replied Bucklaw, “has rather too much of your own cast about, Craigie, to make what Sir William would call a ’famous witness.’  He drinks deep, plays deep, swears deep, and I suspect can lie and cheat a little into the bargain; useful qualities, Craigie, if kept in their proper sphere, but which have a little too much of the freebooter to make a figure in a court of evidence.”

“Well, then,” said Craigengelt, “will you believe Colonel Douglas Ashton, who heard the Marquis of A——­ say in a public circle, but not aware that he was within ear-shot, that his kinsman had made a better arrangement for himself than to give his father’s land for the pale-cheeked daughter of a broken-down fanatic, and that Bucklaw was welcome to the wearing of Ravenswood’s shaughled shoes.”