If you will be so unreasonable as to insult a man of quality under your own roof, I cannot prevent you; but I will not at least be the agent in such a preposterous proceeding." "You will not ?" asked the lady.
"No, by heavens, madam!" her husband replied; "ask me anything congruent with common decency, as to drop his acquaintance by degrees, or the like; but to bid him leave my house is what I will nto and cannot consent to." "Then the task of supporting the honour of the family will fall on me, as it has often done before," said the lady.
She sat down, and hastily wrote a few lines.

The Lord Keeper made another effort to prevent her taking a step so decisive, just as she opened the door to call her female attendant from the ante-room.

"Think what you are doing, Lady Ashton: you are making a mortal enemy of a young man who is like to have the means of harming us----" "Did you ever know a Douglas who feared an enemy ?" answered the lady, contemptuously.
"Ay, but he is as proud and vindictive as an hundred Douglasses, and an hundred devils to boot.

Think of it for a night only." "Not for another moment," answered the lady.

"Here, Mrs.Patullo, give this billet to young Ravenswood." "To the Master, madam!" said Mrs.Patullo.
"Ay, to the Master, if you call him so." "I wash my hands of it entirely," said the Keeper; "and I shall go down into the garden, and see that Jardine gathers the winter fruit for the dessert." "Do so," said the lady, looking after him with glances of infinite contempt; "and thank God that you leave one behind you as fit to protect the honour of the family as you are to look after pippins and pears." The Lord Keeper remained long enough in the garden to give her ladyship's mind time to explode, and to let, as he thought, at least the first violence of Ravenswood's displeasure blow over.