ur determination?"

"And is this all?" said Ravenswood, looking at Lucy. "Are you willing
to barter sworn faith, the exercise of free will, and the feelings of
mutual affection to this wretched hypocritical sophistry?"

"Hear him!" said Lady Ashton, looking to the clergyman--"hear the
blasphemer!"

"May God forgive him," said Bide-the-Bent, "and enlighten his
ignorance!"

"Hear what I have sacrificed for you," said Ravenswood, still addressing
Lucy, "ere you sanction what has been done in your name. The honour of
an ancient family, the urgent advice of my best friends, have been in
vain used to sway my resolution; neither the arguments of reason nor
the portents of superstition have shaken my fidelity. The very dead have
arisen to warn me, and their warning has been despised. Are you prepared
to pierce my heart for its fidelity with the very weapon which my rash
confidence entrusted to your grasp?"

"Master of Ravenswood," said Lady Ashton, "you have asked what questions
you thought fit. You see the total incapacity of my daughter to answer
you. But I will reply for her, and in a manner which you cannot dispute.
You desire to know whether Lucy Ashton, of her own free will, desires
to annual the engagement into which she has been trepanned. You have her
letter under her own hand, demanding the surrender of it; and, in yet
more full evidence of her purpose, here is the contract which she has
this morning subscribed, in presence of this reverence gentleman, with
Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw."

Ravenswood gazed upon the deed as if petrified. "And it was without
fraud or compulsion," said he, looking towards the clergyman, "that Miss
Ashton subscribed this parchment?"

"I couch it upon my sacred character."

"This is indeed, madam, an undeniable piece of evidence," said
Ravenswood, sternly; "and it will be equally unnecessary and
dishonourable to waste another word in useless remonstrance or reproach.
There, madam," he said, laying down before Lucy the signed paper and the
broken piece of gold--"there are the evidences of your first engagement;
may you be more faithful to that which you have just formed. I will
trouble you to return the corresponding tokens of my ill-placed
confidence; I ought rather to say, of my egregious folly."

Lucy returned the scornful glance of her lover with a gaze from which
perception seemed to have been banished; yet she seemed partly to have
understood his meaning, for she raised her hands