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.
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