Or did you but speak according to
the fashion of fair maidens, who are always to hold the pleasures of
life in contempt till they are pressed upon them by the address of some
gentle knight?"
Lucy blushed, disclaimed any inference respecting her own choice
being drawn from her selection of a song, and readily laid aside her
instrument at her father's request that she would attend him in his
walk.
A large and well-wooded park, or rather chase, stretched along the
hill behind the castle, which, occupying, as we have noticed, a pass
ascending from the plain, seemed built in its very gorge to defend
the forest ground which arose behind it in shaggy majesty. Into this
romantic region the father and daughter proceeded, arm in arm, by a
noble avenue overarched by embowering elms, beneath which groups of the
fallow-deer were seen to stray in distant perspective. As they paced
slowly on, admiring the different points of view, for which Sir
William Ashton, notwithstanding the nature of his usual avocations, had
considerable taste and feeling, they were overtaken by the forester,
or park-keeper, who, intent on silvan sport, was proceeding with his
cross-bow over his arm, and a hound led in leash by his boy, into the
interior of the wood.
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