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 our 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.”