She might have borne also in patience, or repelled with scorn, the
bitter taunts and occasional violence of her brother, Colonel Douglas
Ashton, and the impertinent and intrusive interference of other friends
and relations. But it was beyond her power effectually to withstand or
elude the constant and unceasing persecution of Lady Ashton, who, laying
every other wish aside, had bent the whol efforts of her powerful
mind to break her daughter's contract with Ravenswood, and to place
a perpetual bar between the lovers, by effecting Lucy's union with
Bucklaw. Far more deeply skilled than her husband in the recesses of the
human heart, she was aware that in this way she might strike a blow of
deep and decisive vengeance upon one whom she esteemed as her mortal
enemy; nor did she hesitate at raising her arm, although she knew that
the wound must be dealt through the bosom of her daughter. With this
stern and fixed purpose, she sounded every deep and shallow of her
daughter's soul, assumed alternately every disguise of manner which
could serve her object, and prepared at leisure every species of dire
machinery by which the human mind can be wrenched from its settled
determination.
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