At the recommendation of his
pastor, Saunders readily undertook that the letter should be securely
conveyed to the Master of Ravenswood at the court where he now resided.
This retrospect became necessary to explain the conference betwixt Miss
Ashton, her mother, and Bucklaw which we have detailed in a preceding
chapter.
Lucy was now like the sailor who, while drifting through a tempestuous
ocean, clings for safety to a single plank, his powers of grasping it
becoming every moment more feeble, and the deep darkness of the night
only checkered by the flashes of lightning, hissing as they show the
white tops of the billows, in which he is soon to be engulfed.
Week crept away after week, and day after day. St. Jude's day arrived,
the last and protracted term to which Lucy had limited herself, and
there was neither letter nor news of Ravenswood.
CHAPTER XXXII.
How fair these names, how much unlike they look
To all the blurr'd subscriptions in my book!
The bridegroom's letters stand in row above,
Tapering, yet straight, like pine-trees in his grove;
While free and fine the bride's appear below,
As light and slender as her jessamines grow.
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