How much of this change
in his disposition was to be ascribed to the beauty and simplicity of
Miss Ashton, to the readiness with which she accommodated herself to the
inconveniences of her situation; how much to the smooth and plausible
conversation of the Lord Keeper, remarkably gifted with those words
which win the ear, must be left to the reader's ingenuity to conjecture.
But Ravenswood was insensible to neither.
The Lord Keeper was a veteran statesman, well acquainted with courts
and cabinets, and intimate with all the various turns of public affairs
during the last eventful years of the 17th century. He could talk, from
his own knowledge, of men and events, in a way which failed not to win
attention, and had the peculiar art, while he never said a word which
committed himself, at the same time to persuade the hearer that he was
speaking without the least shadow of scrupulous caution or reserve.
Ravenswood, in spite of his prejudices and real grounds of resentment,
felt himself at once amused and instructed in listening to him, while
the statesman, whose inward feelings had at first so much impeded his
efforts to make himself known, had now regained all the ease and fluency
of a silver-tongued lawyer of the very highest order.
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