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 friendly home for Andrew, Lord
Rutherfurd. He went abroad, and died there sixteen years later.
Meantime the preparations for the marriage of young Baldoon with Lord
Stair's daughter went on apace. The bride showed no active dislike to
the bridegroom her parents had provided, but behaved as a mere lay
figure on which wedding garments were fitted, and which received with
cold unresponsiveness all the attentions of the man who was to be her
husband. When the wedding day--August 24th, 1669--arrived, a large
assemblage of relations and friends of both bride and bridegroom
mustered at Carsecreugh. And still the white-faced lay figure
mechanically went through all that was required of her, received the
compliments and jests of the company with chill politeness, but with
never a smile--a bride of marble, with a heart that had turned to stone.
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