rfurd had many arguments that he had deemed
unanswerable, but the lady's nimble wits and ready tongue found an
answer for each one.

It must have been a strange scene that took place that day in the old
mansion of Carsecreugh. The girl herself was present, but, had the tales
of Lady Stair's dealings with the Evil One been true, she could not have
substituted for her beautiful, happy daughter any witch-made thing that
looked more lifeless than the poor, white-faced creature that sat with
silent lips and down-cast eyes, terror-ridden, broken-hearted.

With every impassioned word he spoke Rutherfurd hoped to bring some sign
of life to her, to glean a look from her eyes that showed that her love
was still his, but he pled in vain. As for his arguments, Lady Stair
could quote Scripture with any minister in the land, and the texts she
hurled at him were fearful missiles for one who had not the book of
Numbers at his fingers' ends.

"If a woman 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 bond wherewith she hath
bound her soul shall stand. 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."

So quoted the pitiless voice. Even the devil, they say, can quote
Scripture for his own ends. Finally, the mother, again telling
Rutherfurd that her daughter acknowledged the wrongness of her conduct
and desired to hold no further intercourse with him, turned to the
white, marble creature, who seemed to hear nothing, to understand
nothing, and commanded her to restore the broken half of the golden coin
to him who had bestowed it. For the fraction of a second her icy fingers
touched Lord Rutherfurd's, and yet she spoke no word.

To the fiery Borderer it was an insupportable situation. His temper
went. The broken coin was cast to the ground, and with furious words he
poured out on Lady Stair all his long pent-up anger. Then, turning to
her who, so short a time before, had been all the world to him, he cast
on her the curse, "For you, madam, you will be a world's wonder," and
strode from the room, his face ablaze with wrath, black murder in his
heart. Scotland was no longer a fr