No stage directions or other visualization; but immediate dialog defines the title rôle as courtly and sinister, fascinating and forbidding. Left alone with the maid-servant, Bridget, he makes unashamed and highly successful advances. When he lifts the cap from her head and lets her hair fall down, it reminds one that Byron himself had thus ordered it among the maids on his own estate. Byron had made love to them, too; perhaps some of Ruthven's speeches in this passage, at least, came wholemeal from those youthful conquests.
Yet the seduction is not a gay one, and smacks of bird and snake. When Ruthven says to Bridget,
"You move and live but at my will; dost hear?"
and she answers dully:
"I hear and do submit,"
awareness rises of a darkling and menacing power. Again, as Aubrey mentions the fight with the bandits, Ruthven dismisses the subject with the careless,
"I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death,"
one feels that he fears and spares an enemy no more than a fly. And, suddenly, he turned his attentions to Malvina:
"Yes, I am evil, and my wickedness
Draws to your glister and your purity.