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 received from Miss Ashton’s family, cried shame upon his fickleness and perfidy, as if he had seduced the young lady into an engagement, and wilfully and causelessly abandoned her for another.

Sufficient care was taken that this report should find its way to Ravenswood Castle through every various channel, Lady Ashton being well aware that the very reiteration of the same rumour, from so many quarters, could not but give it a semblance of truth.  By some it was told as a piece of ordinary news, by some communicated as serious intelligence; now it was whispered to Lucy Ashton’s ear in the tone of malignant pleasantry, and now transmitted to her as a matter of grave and serious warning.

Even the boy henry was made the instrument of adding to his sister’s torments.  One morning he rushed into the room with a willow branch in his hand, which he told her had arrived that instant from Germany for her special wearing.  Lucy, as we have seen, was remarkably fond of her younger brother, and at that moment his wanton and thoughtless unkindness seemed more keenly injurious than even the studied insults of her elder brother.  Her grief, however, had no shade of resentment; she folded her arms about the boy’s neck, and saying faintly, “Poor Henry! you speak but what they tell you” she burst into a flood of unrestrained tears.  The boy was moved, notwithstanding the thoughtlessness of his age and character.  “The devil take me,” said he, “Lucy, if I fetch you any more of these tormenting messages again; for I like you better,” said he, kissing away the tears, “than the whole pack of them; and you shall have my grey pony to ride on, and you shall canter him if you like—­ay, and ride beyond the village, too, if you have a mind.”