Ravenswood, not allowing himself to give a second thought to the propriety of his own conduct, walked with a quick step towards the stream, where he found Lucy seated alone by the ruin.
She sate upon one of the disjointed stones of the ancient fountain, and seemed to watch the progress of its current, as it bubbled forth to daylight, in gay and sparkling profusion, from under the shadow of the ribbed and darksome vault, with which veneration, or perhaps remorse, had canopied its source.

To a superstitious eye, Lucy Ashton, folded in her plaided mantle, with her long hair, escaping partly from the snood and falling upon her silver neck, might have suggested the idea of the murdered Nymph of the fountain.

But Ravenswood only saw a female exquisitely beautiful, and rendered yet more so in his eyes--how could it be otherwise ?--by the consciousness that she had placed her affections on him.

As he gazed on her, he felt his fixed resolution melting like wax in the sun, and hastened, therefore, from his concealment in the neighbouring thicket.

She saluted him, but did not arise from the stone on which she was seated.
"My madcap brother," she said, "has left me, but I expect him back in a few minutes; for, fortunately, as anything pleases him for a minute, nothing has charms for him much longer." Ravenswood did not feel the power of informing Lucy that her brother meditated a distant excursion, and would not return in haste.