He, while passing around
the cup which he himself did not taste, soon listened to a thousand
exclamations against the Lord Keeper, and passionate protestations of
attachment to himself, and to the honour of his house. He listened
with dark and sullen brow to ebullitions which he considered justly as
equally evanescent with the crimson bubbles on the brink of the goblet,
or at least with the vapours which its contents excited in the brains of
the revellers around him.
When the last flask was emptied, they took their leave with deep
protestations--to be forgotten on the morrow, if, indeed, those who
made them should not think it necessary for their safety to make a more
solemn retractation.
Accepting their adieus with an air of contempt which he could scarce
conceal, Ravenswood at length beheld his ruinous habitation cleared of
their confluence of riotous guests, and returned to the deserted hall,
which now appeared doubly lonely from the cessation of that clamour to
which it had so lately echoed. But its space was peopled by phantoms
which the imagination of the young heir conjured up before him--the
tarnished honour and degraded fortunes of his house, the destruction
of his own hopes, and the triumph of that family by whom they had been
ruined.
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