She had never happened to see a young man of mien and
features so romantic and so striking as young Ravenswood; but had she
seen an hundred his equals or his superiors in those particulars, no one
else would have been linked to her heart by the strong associations of
remembered danger and escape, of gratitude, wonder, and curiosity. I
say curiosity, for it is likely that the singularly restrained and
unaccommodating manners of the Master of Ravenswood, so much at variance
with the natural expression of his features and grace of his deportment,
as they excited wonder by the contrast, had their effect in riveting her
attention to the recollections. She knew little of Ravenswood, or the
disputes which had existed betwixt her father and his, and perhaps could
in her gentleness of mind hardly have comprehended the angry and bitter
passions which they had engendered. But she knew that he was come of
noble stem; was poor, though descended from the noble and the wealthy;
and she felt that she could sympathise with the feelings of a proud
mind, which urged him to recoil from the proffered gratitude of the new
proprietors of his father's house and domains.
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