While the mother insisted on these topics, the lover in vain conjured the daughter to declare her own opinion and feelings.  She remained totally overwhelmed, as it seemed—­mute, pale, and motionless as a statue.  Only at her mother’s command, sternly uttered, she summoned strength enough to restore to her plighted suitor the piece of broken gold which was the emblem of her troth.  On this he burst forth into a tremendous passion, took leave of the mother with maledictions, and as he left the apartment, turned back to say to his weak, if not fickle, mistresss:  “For you, madam, you will be a world’s wonder”; a phrase by which some remarkable degree of calamity is usually implied.  He went abroad, and returned not again.  If the last Lord Rutherford was the unfortunate party, he must have been the third who bore that title, and who died in 1685.

The marriage betwixt Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar of Baldoon now went forward, the bride showing no repugnance, but being absolutely passive in everything her mother commanded or advised.  On the day of the marriage, which, as was then usual, was celebrated by a great assemblage of friends and relations, she was the same—­sad, silent, and resigned, as it seemed, to her destiny.  A lady, very nearly connected with the family, told the Author that she had conversed on the subject with one of the brothers of the bride, a mere lad at the time, who had ridden before his sister to church.  He said her hand, which lay on his as she held her arm around his waist, was as cold and damp as marble.  But, full of his new dress and the part he acted in the procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at the time.

The bridal feast was followed by dancing.  The bride and bridegroom retired as usual, when of a sudden the most wild and piercing cries were heard from the nuptial chamber.  It was then the custom, to prevent any coarse pleasantry which old times perhaps admitted, that the key of the nuptial chamber should be entrusted to the bridesman.  He was called upon, but refused at first to give it up, till the shrieks became so hideous that he was compelled to hasten with others to learn the cause.  On opening the door, they found the bridegroom lying across the threshold, dreadfully wounded, and streaming with blood.  The bride was then sought for.  She was found in the corner of the large chimney, having no covering save her shift, and that dabbled in gore.  There she sat grinning at them, mopping and mowing, as I heard the expression used; in a word, absolutely insane.  The only words she spoke were, “Tak up your bonny bridegroom.”  She survived this horrible scene little more than a fortnight, having been married on the 24th of August, and dying on the 12th of September 1669.