This precipitate measure, he added, had
produced a very bad effect upon Lady Ashton's mind, which it was
impossible at present to remove. Her son, Colonel Douglas Ashton, had
embraced her prejudices in the fullest extent, and it was impossible for
Sir William to adopt a course disagreeable to them without a fatal and
irreconcilable breach in his family; which was not at present to be
thought of. Time, the great physician, he hoped, would mend all.
In a postscript, Sir William said something more explicitly, which
seemed to intimate that, rather than the law of Scotland should sustain
a severe wound through his sides, by a reversal of the judgment of her
supreme courts, in the case of the barony of Ravenswood, through the
intervention of what, with all submission, he must term a foreign court
of appeal, he himself would extrajudically consent to considerable
sacrifices.
From Lucy Ashton, by some unknown conveyance, the Master received the
following lines: "I received yours, but it was at the utmost risk; do
not attempt to write again till better times.
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