She had not heard from her husband so often or so
regularly as she though him bound in duty to have written, and of this
very interesting intelligence concerning his visit to the Tower of
Wolf's Crag, and the guest whom, with such cordiality, he had received
at Ravenswsood Castle, he had suffered his lady to remain altogether
ignorant, until she now learned it by the chance information of a
stranger. Such concealment approached, in her apprehension, to a
misprision, at last, of treason, if not to actual rebellion against
her matrimonial authority; and in her inward soul she did vow to take
vengeance on the Lord Keeper, as on a subject detected in meditating
revolt. Her indignation burned the more fiercely as she found herself
obliged to suppress it in presence of Lady Blenkensop, the kinswoman,
and of Craigengelt, the confidential friend, of Bucklaw, of whose
alliance she now became trebly desirous, since it occurred to her
alarmed imagination that her husband might, in his policy or timidity,
prefer that of Ravenswood.
The Captain was engineer enough to discover that the train was fired;
and therefore heard, in the course of the same day, without the least
surprise, that Lady Ashton had resolved to abridge her visit to Lady
Blenkensop, and set forth with the peep of morning on her return to
Scotland, using all the despatch which the state of the roads and the
mode of travelling would possibly permit.
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