 themselves incautiously within the reach of an idle young man.
    Ravenswood, with a mind incalculably deeper and more powerful than that of
his companion, had his own anxious subjects of reflection, which wrought for him
the same unhappiness that sheer ennui and want of occupation inflicted on his
companion. The first sight of Lucy Ashton had been less impressive than her
image proved to be upon reflection. As the depth and violence of that revengeful
passion, by which he had been actuated in seeking an interview with the father,
began to abate by degrees, he looked back on his conduct towards the daughter as
harsh and unworthy towards a female of rank and beauty. Her looks of grateful
acknowledgment, her words of affectionate courtesy, had been repelled with
something which approached to disdain; and if the Master of Ravenswood had
sustained wrongs at the hand of Sir William Ashton, his conscience told him they
had been unhandsomely resented towards his daughter. When his thoughts took this
turn of self-reproach, the recollection of Lucy Ashton's beautiful features,
rendered yet more interesting by the circumstances in which their meeting had
taken place, made an impression upon his mind at once soothing and painful. The
sweetness of her voice, the delicacy of her expressions, the vivid glow of her
filial affection, embittered his regret at having repulsed her gratitude with
rudeness, while, at the same time, they placed before his imagination a picture
of the most seducing sweetness.
    Even young Ravenswood's strength of moral feeling and rectitude of purpose
at once increased the danger of cherishing these recollections, and the
propensity to entertain them. Firmly resolved as he was to subdue, if possible,
the predominating vice in his character, he admitted with willingness - nay, he
summoned up in his imagination, the ideas by which it could be most powerfully
counteracted; and, while he did so, a sense of his own harsh conduct towards the
daughter of his enemy naturally induced him, as if by way of recompense, to
invest her with more of grace and beauty than perhaps she could actually claim.
    Had any one at this period told the Master of Ravenswood that he had so
lately vowed vengeance against the whole lineage of him whom he considered, not
unjustly, as author of his father's ruin and death, he might at first have
repelled the charge as a foul calumny; yet, upon serious self-examination, he
would have been compelled to admit, that it had, at one period, some foundation
in truth, though, according to the present tone of his sentiments, it was
difficult to believe that this had really been
