To a superstitious eye, Lucy Ashton, folded in
her plaided mantle, with her long hair, escaping partly from the snood
and falling upon her silver neck, might have suggested the idea of
the murdered Nymph of the fountain. But Ravenswood only saw a female
exquisitely beautiful, and rendered yet more so in his eyes--how
could it be otherwise?--by the consciousness that she had placed her
affections on him. As he gazed on her, he felt his fixed resolution
melting like wax in the sun, and hastened, therefore, from his
concealment in the neighbouring thicket. She saluted him, but did not
arise from the stone on which she was seated.
"My madcap brother," she said, "has left me, but I expect him back in
a few minutes; for, fortunately, as anything pleases him for a minute,
nothing has charms for him much longer."
Ravenswood did not feel the power of informing Lucy that her brother
meditated a distant excursion, and would not return in haste. He sate
himself down on the grass, at some little distance from Miss Ashton, and
both were silent for a short space.
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