His joy at seeing his
daughter safe overcame the surprise with which he would at another time
have beheld her hanging as familiarly on the arm of a stranger as she
might have done upon his own.
"Lucy, my dear Lucy, are you safe?--are you well?" were the only words
that broke from him as he embraced her in ecstasy.
"I am well, sir, thank God! and still more that I see you so; but this
gentleman," she said, quitting his arm and shrinking from him, "what
must he think of me?" and her eloquent blood, flushing over neck and
brow, spoke how much she was ashamed of the freedom with which she had
craved, and even compelled, his assistance.
"This gentleman," said Sir William Ashton, "will, I trust, not regret
the trouble we have given him, when I assure him of the gratitude of
the Lord Keeper for the greatest service which one man ever rendered to
another--for the life of my child--for my own life, which he has saved
by his bravery and presence of mind. He will, I am sure, permit us to
request----" "Request nothing of ME, my lord," said the stranger, in a
stern and peremptory tone; "I am the Master of Ravenswood.
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