The news of Lady Stair’s triumph was not long in coming to Lord Rutherfurd’s ears, and he at once wrote to Janet Dalrymple to remind her that she was pledged to him by everything that they both considered holy.  No reply came from the unhappy girl, but a letter from Lady Stair informed the distracted lover that her daughter was fully sensible of the grave fault of which she had been guilty in entering into an engagement without the sanction of her parents, and that she now retracted her vows, and was about to give her hand to Mr. David Dunbar of Baldoon.  Such an answer, written by the mother of his betrothed, and not by the girl herself, was scarcely likely to be received with meekness by one of the Rutherfurds of that ilk.  Lord Rutherfurd demanded an interview with Janet Dalrymple, and absolutely declined to accept any reply that did not come to him from her own lips.  It was a struggle between a high-spirited, determined man, deeply in love with her that he strove for, and a woman whose heart was as hard as her brain was keen, and who did not scruple to use any means, fair or foul, by which to gain her own ends.  The lion and the snake are unequal combatants, and in this case the lion was worsted indeed.  Lady Stair granted the interview, but took care that not for one moment was her daughter permitted to be alone with her lover.  Lord Rutherfurd 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.