 after they had been uttered, confuted them,
by saving at once her father's life and her own. Had he nourished such black
revenge as Alice's dark hints seemed to indicate, no deed of active guilt was
necessary to the full gratification of that evil passion. He needed but to have
withheld for an instant his indispensable and effective assistance, and the
object of his resentment must have perished, without any direct aggression on
his part, by a death equally fearful and certain. She conceived, therefore, that
some secret prejudice, or the suspicions incident to age and misfortune, had led
Alice to form conclusions injurious to the character, and irreconcilable both
with the generous conduct and noble features of the Master of Ravenswood. And in
this belief Lucy reposed her hope, and went on weaving her enchanted web of
fairy tissue, as beautiful and transient as the film of the gossamer, when it is
pearled with the morning dew and glimmering to the sun.
    Her father, in the meanwhile, as well as the Master of Ravenswood, were
making reflections, as frequent though more solid than those of Lucy, upon the
singular event which had taken place. The Lord Keeper's first task, when he
returned home, was to ascertain by medical advice that his daughter had
sustained no injury from the dangerous and alarming situation in which she had
been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he proceeded to revise the memoranda which
he had taken down from the mouth of the person employed to interrupt the funeral
service of the late Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to
practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to
soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to
exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the Privy Council the necessity of
using conciliatory measures with young men, whose blood and temper were hot, and
their experience of life limited. He did not hesitate to attribute some censure
to the conduct of the officer, as having been unnecessarily irritating.
    These were the contents of his public despatches. The letters which he wrote
to those private friends into whose management the matter was likely to fall,
were of a yet more favourable tenor. He represented that lenity in this case
would be equally politic and popular, whereas, considering the high respect with
which the rites of interment are regarded in Scotland, any severity exercised
against the Master of Ravenswood for protecting those of his father from
interruption, would be on all sides most unfavourably construed. And, finally,
assuming the language of a generous and high-spirited man, he
