The female agent of hell having been dismissed from the castle. Lady Ashton, who wrought by all variety of means, resolved to employ, for working the same end on Lucy's mind, an agent of a very different character. This was no other than the Reverend Mr Bide-the-bent, a presbyterian clergyman, of the very strictest order and most rigid principles, whose aid she called in upon the principle of the tyrant in the tragedy:—
"I'll have a priest shall preach her from her faith,
And make it sin not to renounce that vow,
Which I'd have broken"
But Lady Ashton was mistaken in the agent she had selected. His prejudices, indeed, were easily enlisted on her side, and it was no difficult matter to make him regard with horror the prospect of a union betwixt the daughter of a God-fearing, professing, and presbyterian family of distinction, with the heir of a blood-thirsty prelatist and persecutor, the hands of whose
