The tone of obstinacy with which this was said, her eyes flashing with unnatural light, and her hands firmly clenched, precluded the possibility of dispute; and the utmost length which Lady Ashton’s art could attain, only got her the privilege of dictating the letter, by which her daughter required to know of Ravenswood whether he intended to abide by or to surrender what she termed “their unfortunate engagement.”  Of this advantage Lady Ashton so far and so ingeniously availed herself that, according to the wording of the letter, the reader would have supposed Lucy was calling upon her lover to renounce a contract which was contrary to the interests and inclinations of both.  Not trusting even to this point of deception, Lady Ashton finally determined to suppress the letter altogether, in hopes that Lucy’s impatience would induce her to condemn Ravenswood unheard and in absence.  In this she was disappointed.  The time, indeed, had long elapsed when an answer should have been received from the continent.  The faint ray of hope which still glimmered in Lucy’s mind was well nigh extinguished.  But the idea never forsook her that her letter might not have been duly forwarded.  One of her mother’s new machinations unexpectedly furnished her with the means of ascertaining what she most desired to know.

The female agent of hell having been dismissed from the castle, Lady Ashton, who wrought by all variety of means, resolved to employ, for working the same end on Lucy’s mind, an agent of a very different character.  This was no other than the Reverent Mr. Bide-the-Bent, a presbyterian clergyman, formerly mentioned, of the very strictest order and the most rigid orthodoxy, whose aid she called in, upon the principle of the tyrant in the in the tragedy: 

     I’ll have a priest shall preach her from her faith,
     And make it sin not to renounce that vow
     Which I’d have broken.

But Lady Ashton was mistaken in the agent she had selected.  His prejudices, indeed, were easily enlisted on her side, and it was no difficult matter to make him regard with horror the prospect of a union betwixt the daughter of a God-fearing, professing, and Presbyterian family of distinction and the heir of a bloodthirsty prelatist and persecutor, the hands of whose fathers had been dyed to the wrists in the blood of God’s saints.  This resembled, in the divine’s opinion, the union of a Moabitish stranger with a daughter of Zion.  But with all the more severe prejudices and principles of his sect, Bide-the-Bent possessed a sound judgment, and had learnt sympathy even in that very school of persecution where the heart is so frequently hardened.  In a private interview with Miss Ashton, he was deeply moved by her distress, and could not but admit the justice of her request to be permitted a direct communication with Ravenswood upon the subject of their solemn contract.  When she urged to him the great uncertainty under which she laboured whether her letter had been ever forwarded, the old man paced the room with long steps, shook his grey head, rested repeatedly for a space on his ivory-headed staff, and, after much hesitation, confessed that he thought her doubts so reasonable that he would himself aid in the removal of them.