 less pleasantly engaged. So soon as Ravenswood had determined upon
giving the Lord Keeper such hospitality as he had to offer, he deemed it
incumbent on him to assume the open and courteous brow of a well-pleased host.
It has been often remarked, that when a man commences by acting a character, he
frequently ends by adopting it in good earnest. In the course of an hour or two,
Ravenswood, to his own surprise, found himself in the situation of one who
frankly does his best to entertain welcome and honoured guests. How much of this
change in his disposition was to be ascribed to the beauty and simplicity of
Miss Ashton, to the readiness with which she accommodated herself to the
inconveniences of her situation - how much to the smooth and plausible
conversation of the Lord Keeper, remarkably gifted with those words which win
the ear, must be left to the reader's ingenuity to conjecture. But Ravenswood
was insensible to neither.
    The Lord Keeper was a veteran statesman, well acquainted with courts and
cabinets, and intimate with all the various turns of public affairs during the
last eventful years of the seventeenth century. He could talk, from his own
knowledge, of men and events, in a way which failed not to win attention, and
had the peculiar art, while he never said a word which committed himself, at the
same time, to persuade the hearer that he was speaking without the least shadow
of scrupulous caution or reserve. Ravenswood, in spite of his prejudices, and
real grounds of resentment, felt himself at once amused and instructed in
listening to him, while the statesman, whose inward feelings had at first so
much impeded his efforts to make himself known, had now regained all the ease
and fluency of a silver-tongued lawyer of the very highest order.
    His daughter did not speak much, but she smiled; and what she did say argued
a submissive gentleness, and a desire to give pleasure, which, to a proud man
like Ravenswood, was more fascinating than the most brilliant wit. Above all, he
could not but observe that, whether from gratitude, or from some other motive,
he himself, in his deserted and unprovided hall, was as much the object of
respectful attention to his guests, as he would have been when surrounded by all
the appliances and means of hospitality proper to his high birth. All
deficiencies passed unobserved, or if they did not escape notice, it was to
praise the substitutes which Caleb had contrived to supply the want of the usual
accommodations. Where a smile was unavoidable, it was a very good-humoured
