Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/52

42 this would have moved compassion, but Lady Ashton, compact and firm of purpose, saw these waverings of health and intellect with no greater sympathy than that with which the hostile engineer regards the towers of a beleaguered city as they reel under the discharge of his artillery, or rather she considered these starts and inequalities of temper as symptoms of Lucy's expiring resolution; as the angler, by the throws and convulsive exertions of the fish which he has hooked, becomes aware that he soon will be able to land him. To accelerate the catastrophe in the present case, Lady Ashton had recourse to an expedient very consistent with the temper and credulity of those times, but which the reader will probably pronounce truly diabolical.