 mingled in society until after marriage, and, both in law and fact, were
held to be under the strict tutelage of their parents, who were too apt to
enforce the views for their settlement in life, without paying any regard to the
inclination of the parties chiefly interested. On such occasions, the suitor
expected little more from his bride than a silent acquiescence in the will of
her parents; and as few opportunities of acquaintance, far less of intimacy,
occurred, he made his choice by the outside, as the lovers in the Merchant of
Venice select the casket, contented to trust to chance the issue of the lottery,
in which he had hazarded a venture.
    It was not therefore surprising, such being the general manners of the age,
that Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw, whom dissipated habits had detached in some degree
from the best society, should not attend particularly to those feelings in his
elected bride to which many men of more sentiment, experience, and reflection,
would, in all probability, have been equally indifferent. He knew what all
accounted the principal point, that her parents and friends, namely, were
decidedly in his favour, and there existed most powerful reasons for their
predilection.
    In truth, the conduct of the Marquis of A-- since Ravenswood's departure,
had been such as almost to bar the possibility of his kinsman's union with Lucy
Ashton. The Marquis was Ravenswood's sincere, but misjudging friend, or rather,
like many friends and patrons, he consulted what he considered to be his
relation's true interest, although he knew that in doing so he ran counter to
his inclinations.
    The Marquis drove on, therefore, with the plenitude of ministerial
authority, an appeal to the British House of Peers against those judgments of
the courts of law, by which Sir William became possessed of Ravenswood's
hereditary property. As this measure, enforced with all the authority of power,
was new in Scottish judicial proceedings, though now so frequently resorted to,
it was exclaimed against by the lawyers on the opposite side of politics, as an
interference with the civil judicature of the country, equally new, arbitrary,
and tyrannical. And if it thus affected even strangers connected with them only
by political party, it may be guessed what the Ashton family themselves said and
thought under so gross a dispensation. Sir William, still more worldly-minded
than he was timid, was reduced to despair by the loss by which he was
threatened. His son's haughtier spirit was exalted into rage at the idea of
being deprived of his expected
