hemence: "I am still that Edgar Ravenswood
who, for your affection, renounced the dear ties by which injured honour
bound him to seek vengeance. I am that Ravenswood who, for your sake,
forgave, nay, clasped hands in friendship with, the oppressor and
pillager of his house, the traducer and murderer of his father."

"My daughter," answered Lady Ashton, interrupting him, "has no occasion
to dispute the identity of your person; the venom of your present
language is sufficient to remind her that she speaks with the moral
enemy of her father."

"I pray you to be patient, madam," answered Ravenswood; "my answer
must come from her own lips. Once more, Miss Lucy Ashton, I am that
Ravenswood to whom you granted the solemn engagement which you now
desire to retract and cancel."

Lucy's bloodless lips could only falter out the words, "It was my
mother."

"She speaks truly," said Lady Ashton, "it WAS I who, authorised alike
by the laws of God and man, advised her, and concurred with her, to
set aside an unhappy and precipitate engagement, and to annul it by the
authority of Scripture itself."

"Scripture!" said Ravenswood, scornfully.

"Let him hear the text," said Lady Ashton, appealing to the divine, "on
which you yourself, with cautious reluctance, declared the nullity of
the pretended engagement insisted upon by this violent man."

The clergyman took his clasped Bible from his pocket, and read the
following words: "If a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself
by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth, and her father hear
her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father
shall hold his peace at her; then all her vows shall stand, and every
vow wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand."

"And was it not even so with us?" interrrupted Ravenswood.

"Control thy impatience, young man," answered the divine, "and hear what
follows in the sacred text: 'But if her father disallow her in the day
that he heareth, not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath
bound her soul, shall stand; and the Lord shall forgive her, because her
father disallowed her."

"And was not," said Lady Ashton, fiercely and triumphantly breaking
in--"was not ours the case stated in the Holy Writ? Will this person
deny, that the instant her parents heard of the vow, or bond, by which
our daughter had bound her soul, we disallowed the same in the most
express terms, and informed him by writing of o