There was no room to retreat.  The Master of Ravenswood led the way, continuing to keep hold of the lady’s bridle to prevent her horse from starting at some unexpected explosion of thunder.  He was not so bewildered in his own hurried reflections but that he remarked, that the deadly paleness which had occupied her neck and temples, and such of her features as the riding-mask left exposed, gave place to a deep and rosy suffusion; and he felt with embarrassment that a flush was by tacit sympathy excited in his own cheeks.  The stranger, with watchfulness which he disguised under apprehensions of the safety of his daughter, continued to observe the expression of the Master’s countenance as they ascended the hill to Wolf’s Crag.  When they stood in front of that ancient fortress, Ravenswood’s emotions were of a very complicated description; and as he led the way into the rude courtyard, and hallooed to Caleb to give attendance, there was a tone of sternness, almost of fierceness, which seemed somewhat alien from the courtesies of one who is receiving honoured guests.

Caleb came; and not the paleness of the fair stranger at the first approach of the thunder, nor the paleness of any other person, in any other circumstances whatever, equalled that which overcame the thin cheeks of the disconsolate seneschal when he beheld this accession of guests to the castle, and reflected that the dinner hour was fast approaching.  “Is he daft?” he muttered to himself;—­“is he clean daft a’thegither, to bring lords and leddies, and a host of folk behint them, and twal o’clock chappit?” Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that “They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant.”

“Silence, Balderstone!” said Ravenswood, sternly; “your folly is unseasonable.  Sir and madam,” he said, turning to his guests, “this old man, and a yet older and more imbecile female domestic, form my whole retinue.  Our means of refreshing you are more scanty than even so miserable a retinue, and a dwelling so dilapidated, might seem to promise you; but, such as they may chance to be, you may command them.”

The elder stranger, struck with the ruined and even savage appearance of the Tower, rendered still more disconsolate by the lowering and gloomy sky, and perhaps not altogether unmoved by the grave and determined voice in which their host addressed them, looked round him anxiously, as if he half repented the readiness with which he had accepted the offered hospitality.  But there was now no opportunity of receding from the situation in which he had placed himself.