 castle, and we have seen how he played his part.
    The accidental storm did more to farther the Lord Keeper's plan of forming a
personal acquaintance with young Ravenswood, than his most sanguine expectations
could have anticipated. His fear of the young nobleman's personal resentment had
greatly decreased, since he considered him as formidable from his legal claims,
and the means he might have of enforcing them. But although he thought, not
unreasonably, that only desperate circumstances drove men on desperate measures,
it was not without a secret terror, which shook his heart within him, that he
first felt himself enclosed within the desolate Tower of Wolf's Crag; a place so
well fitted, from solitude and strength, to be a scene of violence and
vengeance. The stern reception at first given to them by the Master of
Ravenswood, and the difficulty he felt in explaining to that injured nobleman
what guests were under the shelter of his roof, did not soothe these alarms; so
that when Sir William Ashton heard the door of the courtyard shut behind him
with violence, the words of Alice rung in his ears, »that he had drawn on
matters too hardly with so fierce a race as those of Ravenswood, and that they
would bide their time to be avenged.«
    The subsequent frankness of the Master's hospitality, as their acquaintance
increased, abated the apprehensions these recollections were calculated to
excite; and it did not escape Sir William Ashton, that it was to Lucy's grace
and beauty he owed the change in their host's behaviour.
    All these thoughts thronged upon him when he took possession of the secret
chamber. The iron lamp, the unfurnished apartment, more resembling a prison than
a place of ordinary repose, the hoarse and ceaseless sound of the waves rushing
against the base of the rock on which the castle was founded, saddened and
perplexed his mind. To his own successful machinations, the ruin of the family
had been in a great measure owing, but his disposition was crafty and not cruel;
so that actually to witness the desolation and distress he had himself
occasioned, was as painful to him as it would be to the humane mistress of a
family to superintend in person the execution of the lambs and poultry which are
killed by her own directions. At the same time, when he thought of the
alternative of restoring to Ravenswood a large proportion of his spoils, or of
adopting, as an ally and member of his own family, the heir of this impoverished
house, he felt as the spider may be supposed to do, when his whole web, the
